


Eremite

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence, Empathy, Fluff, Friendship, Homelessness, Intimacy, M/M, Post Red Dragon, Reunion, Romance, Scarring, trickery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2015-08-25
Packaged: 2018-04-11 18:47:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4447559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Perhaps he will draw a crowd, small though it may be. Money is money, and small change guarantees at least a coffee in the morning, which is enough fuel for his broken mind to function at its peak capacity - after everything. And if he’s lucky, very lucky, he might have enough for a cheap drink before he sleeps.</i>
</p><p>  <i>Will doesn’t let himself remember what having a good day used to mean. It doesn’t do to dwell on unrealities.</i></p><p>Will Graham is homeless in Florence, making money reading people who pass by. Set post Red Dragon verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ride_eternal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ride_eternal/gifts).



> Happy happy happy birthday to the AMAZING Ride_eternal! We really hope you like this bb, your idea was so much fun to work on, we flew right through it! You are amazing! Have the most wonderful day okay! 
> 
> As usual, all of the love and kudos to our invaluable beta [ noodle!! ](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)

He only puts out a cup when he’s finished his coffee, and only then to keep the change together.

They know him at the cafe. Hell, it would be hard not to know him. Will tries to tell himself that the servers are busy, you know, loads of tourists this time of year all screaming in coarse American accents that they _just have to try real Italian espresso_. They set his paper cup of coffee - Americano, plain - on the counter as soon as he steps inside. They wave away the crumpled bill he offers them and always leaves anyway.

They’re busy, he tells himself, because it’s easier to lie than to accept that his face is bad for business.

The tourists always hate the espresso.

So he takes his coffee to the piazza and sits on the steps beside the fountain. 17th century, dolphins, sea-people, stoney sprays of water made slick by the real thing flowing over them. He read the plaque once, but didn’t bother to remember it. It doesn’t matter, anyway.

When his coffee’s done, he sets it in front of himself and watches as the dark traces inside dry. The sun rises overhead as the piazza fills and with his head back against the marble he lets his eyes slip closed. It’s always a gamble, knowing the polizia will come prodding with their sticks if he’s asleep. He isn’t, though, and as the first shadow passes close enough to him to be accompanied by a clink of coins, he cracks his eyes open again.

“Buongiorno,” Will manages. Passable. Not good, but passable. He waits for the girl’s mouth to close again after falling slack, worried that she’ll appear rude. She does, but he doesn’t mind. It isn’t intentional. Not like her hair, freshly-washed, flaxen, bobby-pinned back into a braid that makes her seem younger than she is already - on gap year, most likely, just starting. Her shirt is tucked into her shorts, which hug tight despite the movement of her fingers across their hems as if to slip them lower.

Will glances to the coins, and keeps his face downturned, away, as he adds softly, “Your parents mean well for you, but that doesn’t mean you have to listen to them.”

A startled laugh breaks from the girl, stopped mid-stride back to the band of rowdy tourists exiting the cafe. They chuckle at her from distance, but she watches only Will now.

“Beg pardon?”

“Your parents,” he says again. “They pick at you - don’t stare, stand straight, shoulders back, fix your hair. Their parents did it to them, most likely, so they don’t know any other way. They gave you hell before they let you come on this trip.”

“How do you -”

“They mean well, they just don’t know how else to worry. Take what you can from them. Leave the rest. And while you’re here, do something that would shock them if they knew.”

The girl blinks, at once wary and curious of the strange man who sits by the fountain. He isn’t unclean, despite the threadbare slacks he wears, the worn-sole shoes and soft cotton shirt, striped in plaid. He is far from rude. He is soft-spoken and articulate, genuine in his advice, if a little terrifying in the accuracy. She presses her lips together and turns to look over her shoulder through the small crowd of tourists. A man stands under a tree, phone in hand, fingers typing away. She doesn’t need to say much when she turns back, Will just blinks, allows his eyes to briefly narrow in a smile. He thanks her again for the change and doesn’t watch her as she walks away.

It will be a busy day. The morning is already proving warm and it will only grow warmer. The stone which Will sits against will remain blissfully cool with the water cascading so close. Perhaps he will be asked politely to leave, and not sit in such a photogenic location when he himself is anything but. Perhaps he will be heeded, today, as he so rarely is.

Perhaps he will draw a crowd, small though it may be. Money is money, and small change guarantees at least a coffee in the morning, which is enough fuel for his broken mind to function at its peak capacity - after everything. And if he’s lucky, very lucky, he might have enough for a cheap drink before he sleeps.

Will doesn’t let himself remember what having a good day used to mean. It doesn’t do to dwell on unrealities.

The girl chats with a few others near the tree, pointing towards Will. He watches only peripherally. He knows the grimaces are there, so there’s little need to inflict them on himself: the pity and shock, the horror and curiosity. The marble step on which he sits rivets pain up his spine. A phantom sensation? No. He’s too old for this shit, so slowly he drags himself towards standing, turning at the waist to try and crack his spine.

“Are you leaving?”

The voice is crisp and clear as the water that mists around them. The accent is English, educated, but not posh. Practiced. Will turns to regard the speaker, the young man with the phone that he now pockets.

“My apologies,” he says, “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I overheard the girls speaking about you. Are you a mind-reader?”

Will snorts, careful not to let a smile snarl his expression more.

“No.”

“Pity,” the man says, but his smile speaks of anything but. He seems to have no qualms looking at Will’s face, and he doesn’t stare. He sees him as though Will is without them, and that, to Will, is entirely unnerving. “I had hoped for something novel to begin my last day here.”

“You seem like a man unused to disappointment,” Will points out, clasping his hands behind his back and stretching a little more. “So that should be a novel sensation in itself.”

The man laughs, genuinely pleased by the answer, and with a brief gesture that Will should wait as he is, bends to deposit a note, not coins, into the little paper cup.

“Then let me enjoy my disappointment properly, and pay for it,” he says. “As you said, it isn’t every day that I find myself twisted into such a position.”

Will settles back against the edge of the fountain, grateful for the spray that mists against the back of his sun-roughened neck. He glances to the bill within - several, in fact - and lifts a brow.

“And what position is that?”

The man grins, rakish, eyes narrowing. They’re the same faint blue as the summer sky above, cloudless and pale with light. “If I told you that,” he begins, but Will lifts a hand to stop him. Nose wrinkling, scars pulling tight as he does, Will shakes his head.

“Let me try to untwist you,” Will says. He takes in the easy posture of the man, hands in his pockets and shoulders at rest, who moments before had been bent over his phone, fingers tapping furious. His clothes are more expensive than one would guess, visible in coded details like contrast seaming and the soft alpaca scarf around his neck, entirely unnecessary in Florence’s summer. Will knows the materials. He knows why he knows the materials. Will glances up as the man’s brows lift, but as they do, he squints a little more.

He isn’t hard of sight, but he wears reading glasses.

He reads often enough to have earned them.

With a deep breath, Will starts to reach for the bridge of his own nose but stops, curling his hand to a fist that he lets drop against the marble.

“You wouldn’t tell me anyway - your position.”

“No?”

“No. Because you don’t have the words for it, yet, but you’re trying to find them. You’re very talented when it comes to words - choosing the right one for just what you mean. Maybe you’re a professor, or you could have been at one point,” Will says. “So whatever it is that you can’t untwist yourself from with clever turns of phrase has you a little anxious. I don’t think it has to do with your trip. It’s personal. And you don’t know how to charm it away.”

Will parts his lips with his tongue, holding the tip against against the uneven ridge where his mouth no longer meets right.

“Novel enough?” he asks, after an uneasy beat. A quick glance to the cup betrays his own anxiety, that this man - despite everything Will sees in the openness of his expression - is toying with him. That he’ll take the money back. Pretend none of it was true.

In a lifetime of losing battles, Will stopped fighting paranoia a long time ago.

"Extraordinary," the man says, and his tone is smooth enough to suggest that that, too, is genuine. He watches Will a moment more before gesturing a question. Will holds his breath before finally nodding, shifting enough for the man to sit next to him.

"Professorship reeks to all high heaven, so that I won't grant you as a victory. But why words?"

"You use several when one would suffice," Will answers. "You turn them in a specific way. It isn't conversation so much as a cleverly adapted script."

His companion blinks and smiles wider, eyes narrowing further.

"Are you suggesting I'm pretentious?"

"Almost," Will offers. He feels his lips want to turn up on a smile as well before he turns away to avoid it. "You enjoy being seen that way. Foppish and clever and verbose."

"But?"

"But in truth you are well-read. Clever. This wasn't handed to you, you earned this. But you enjoy playing the game, and it's well-played, too. Who can resist a man with a British accent?"

"You're certainly making a go of it."

Will turns back slowly, brow up in surprise and disbelief. The man just grins.

"But," Anthony adds, leaning a little nearer, "even you're struggling not to succumb."

With a tilt of his head, Will snorts, and the soft sound betrays his amusement. “Seems like you’re not a mind-reader either.”

“Mis-reader is more accurate,” he agrees. “Otherwise it would be too easy, and I wouldn’t have to ask if you wanted to have breakfast. On me.”

Something prickles along the back of Will’s neck - a breeze, cooling the fountain mist, but more than that. The man’s whole posture is at ease and unassuming. He’s unafraid of Will. Unafraid of the offer so openly made. That in itself is a concern, and Will wonders how often he’s done this.

More to the point, he wonders why.

He’s been doing this long enough to know the risks. Hell, before he started doing this in particular he knew the risks. Those without permanent homes are susceptible to predators who think they wouldn’t be missed, vulnerable to those seeking an easy fuck from someone who needs so relatively little.

Will is luckier than most, polite and pitiable enough that he’s allowed to sleep at night in a monastery several miles away. So long as he doesn’t drink while he’s there, they even let him keep a bag - his only - in a closet, in the small shared room afforded by way of their charity for the homeless. A few shirts and a change of pants. Pictures, warped by getting caught in the rain too often. A newspaper clipping, folded inside his clothes to prevent it the same fate, even as it grows brittle each time he touches it.

He’s fortunate. And he didn’t get that way by trusting blindly.

“Work hours,” Will says, motioning vaguely with his hand, striped pale with scars along forearm and palm. He holds his breath for a moment, watching the group of girls still discussing up a storm, broken intermittently with peals of laughter. “They’re all going to come over here and want me to do it,” he observes, just as one girl pushes another forward and she affects a lanky stride.

Lowering his face, lowering his voice, he adds, “Thank you for the offer, but I’m fine.”

Relatively speaking to how bad things could be, where he did need to risk his life for food. Relatively speaking to how things used to be - that’s a different story, and arguable. His belly snarls in protest, empty of the thin soup he had the night before at the shelter, but nothing comes without a price, and Will has yet to have to fuck for money or food.

Not that anyone’s really offered, considering what he has to work with.

"You know what I find most interesting?" the man asks him, making no move, yet, to stand and leave Will be. "That now that I have heard you lie, I know that the observations you make are true. I wonder if anyone else can tell, or if this is a parlor trick to them?"

Will blinks a moment, hands folding together carefully, wrists on his knees. It's a good read, and accurate enough. Will wonders if he’s allowed his guard down so much lately because he truly doesn’t care or because he unconsciously wants someone to see him properly for a change.

Know him.

He shakes his head, doesn’t need that shit clouding him.

"People like hearing what they want to hear," Will points out. "The mind automatically makes its own associations. It's how so-called fortune tellers scrape their living."

"And how you do."

Will shakes his head, interrupting the conversation for a moment to turn a soft look to the girl approaching, nervous and shy, coins in her hand, warming to her palm. His eyes gentle, but the smile never comes. Only once did he need that lesson taught to him, only once did he need to see the tension it creates, the flinch it merits. Beside him, the writer remains, removing his phone from his pocket again.

“Buongiorno,” Will offers, and the girl manages a nervous smile as she drops her coins into the cup.

“My friend said you’re psychic.”

He doesn’t deny it, not this time. At some point, the fight went out of him, embers stirred now by the persistence of the man at his side, but not yet to the conflagration that used to burn so hot. Sucking his uneven lower lip, its scarred indention misaligned with the one on his top lip where the glass skidded across his teeth, he considers her. Blue eyes, but ringed with brown. Hair cropped along her jaw, and a loose tank slipping off one shoulder. She folds her hands together and takes a step back.

“Gap year?” Will asks, and she nods once, lips curving. “Your friends,” he says. “You’re not older than them, but you feel like you are. They talk a lot, gossip and fret, and you’d rather just act. Do something. Make something happen.”

She parts her lips now, in pleasant surprise, and Will can feel her searching across the mangled roadmap of his face as if she might see an answer in it, as he does in hers.

“That’s why you cut your hair. Dyed it. Dropped the glasses for contacts,” Will suggests. “Reinvention, now that you’re free. You don’t plan on going back, if you can help it. Not for romance, you don’t - you’re not the type to imagine you’ll meet someone and run away with them. But you would for something else, if it moved you.”

Will pauses in thought, and his eyes narrow as he guesses, “Art?”

She bites her lip, delighted, but says nothing, brow rising gently as though to challenge Will’s assumption. He takes a breath, a little thing, and amends.

"Photography. A childhood stereotype that became a genuine interest. But you haven't told anyone, not that you're pursuing it, not that you plan to make your living off of it as you travel." Will sits back, feeling a pang, as he so often does, of the emotions roiling through the young girl before him. Nervous and hopeful and curious.

"You can," Will tells her finally. "You’ve got an eye for it."

She brings her hand up immediately to fiddle with her hair, pushing it behind her ear over and over, smoothing it down strand by strand unnecessarily. After a moment she turns away to her friends again, then back to Will.

"Thank you."

He just nods, lets her go, sighs when the tendrils of her flailing emotions follow her away.

"I tell truths," Will says, answering the man next to him as though they had not been interrupted. "How people interpret that is out of my hands."

"Subtle manipulation," the man laughs, but there is no accusation there, merely amusement. "Guidance -"

"Truth," Will says again, and allows a smile now that no one but the other is near enough to see it. There is a strange comfort in the banter, familiarity with a world Will had long ago ostracized himself from. He had never been good with people anyway, but he had been better, it had been easier, when his outward appearance welcomed rather than terrified.

He turns as though to speak again, when he sees the girl returning, more confidence in her stride, now, and a camera in her hands. Will’s shoulders tense, just enough, and he swallows. When she stops, near as before, her smile is genuine, if little.

"May I take your photo?"

This, he didn’t see coming. Will’s hands spread against his thighs, as if f it might ease the clammy heat from his palms. Behind snarled scar tissue, among the dissonance of a face that doesn’t fit quite right at its angles, he hopes she can’t see the sudden cold rush that pools in his belly. His mind reels with all the reasons to say no - he doesn’t want his face anywhere so permanent, he doesn’t deserve to be. He doesn’t want to be found by people who would try to help him, he wants to be found by the only one who wouldn’t. Anxiety sinks into him like a too-fast drop in an elevator, but he draws a breath as she starts to apologize, and he shakes his head.

Every possibility comes to the same conclusion.

It doesn’t matter.

He doesn’t matter.

And it’s a perverse grasping for long-severed strands of ego to pretend otherwise.

“Surely there’s better uses for your film,” he says, not unkindly. “You’re in Florence.”

“Another shot of the Duomo from the same angle as everyone else?” she answers, but in her smile is an apology. “Sorry, I just -”

“It’s fine,” Will manages. “You - you can, if you need. Want. Thank you for asking first.”

She smiles more, grateful, and holds the camera before her as she adjusts the settings, finds the focus she wants. Will tries to stay still, eyes not on the camera but his face to it, at least. And then, a moment of panicked doubt has him turning aside, just as the shutter goes off.

He curses softly, just beneath his breath, and shakes his head.

"I'm sorry."

"No, it's -" She smiles, looking at her little display before taking a tentative step closer. "It turned out really good. Do you want to see?"

Will considers, ducks his head, and lifts only his eyes in answer. He is curious. As human as the rest of them, in the end, despite occasional hopes of being something more. He lets her step near and turn the little screen for him to see.

The settings have her photographs in black and white, and he sees himself, jaw tense, eyes narrowed, in profile. He is looking not at the man next to him but to his hands, and the writer himself sits as though posed, head down and hands almost clasped around his phone. It is strangely poignant, Will has to admit, there is no pity in her camera's gaze as there is none in her own. 

His scars are clear and grotesque, yet he feels as though this photo deserves to stay, even if simply preserved on a memory card of a girl who wants to make her name on this.

"Thank you," Will says, finds that he means it.

She brings her camera close again and ducks to fold a bill into his cup. He shakes his head, fingers curling against the marble ledge of the fountain.

“You don’t have to -”

“Model fee,” is all she says, offering another smile before she turns back to the group.

Will’s throat clicks as he swallows. He shouldn’t fight it, he shouldn’t argue. It’s gotten easier to just accept but if he lets himself think beyond survival - the need to eat, to sleep, to wash himself and his things - the necessity of others’ charity brings his stomach to his throat.

He stretches his fingers, as if to release that tattered thread of ego, too.

“What’s your name?” Will asks, reaching down to take up the bills so they don’t blow away.

“Anthony Dimmond,” he answers, clicking his screen dark and offering his hand. “Yours?”

Will ignores the hand and the question, folding the euros neatly together. “Congratulations.”

The writer laughs, a single bright note, and his brows raise. “For?”

“Your book.”

“You know it?”

“In the library,” Will says. “When it rains. I saw it on a display there. Figure if I’m there, I might as well make the most of it. It’s nice. They have couches.”

“So you read it,” Anthony grins, and Will’s brow creases, tamping down another smile.

“You’re very bad at this,” he remarks. “I don’t read poetry.”

"You can hardly claim such a lofty thing," the poet laughs. "Poetry is as vast a spectrum as skin color. Frost is nothing like Donne, neither are anything like Siken."

"Interesting pitch."

"Hardly, this is me indignant," Anthony snorts. He sits back, arms out behind himself. "We shred our souls, us creative types, and add it to every piece of work we produce."

"Staking a claim?"

"Finding a connection," the poet corrects him. "For someone who plays a cynic so well, you wear your heart on your sleeve, did you know that?"

This time, Will smiles before he can stop himself. It is a bitter thing, twisted not by his scars but by the sentiment behind it. He stands again slowly to stretch and return circulation to his legs, grimacing mildly at the discomfort.

“I think that you need a friend,” Will answers, “or a therapist, more than me.”

“You’re avoiding the question.”

“It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. Several, in fact, almost accusatory because you hope that I’ll start spilling truths about myself in defense. You don’t know anything about me, and I’ve no interest in being your amusement for the afternoon. You can have your money back.”

Anthony’s smile does not waver, but his eyes do narrow a little. In thought, perhaps, or consideration. For a moment he does nothing more than watch Will, upset and standing to keep that space between them.

Then he stands himself, offers out his hand again for Will to ignore, as before.

"I hope you have a fruitful day, then,” he says, watching Will a moment more, noting how he does not settle while Anthony is still here. "Do with the money as you please, though I would still recommend that cafe just over there. Beautiful pastries."

Anthony takes a step back, and another, and only in turning away adds, "Or perhaps donate it to another like yourself. Some sell limericks by the bridge, when the crowds are warm with wine and good humor."

And there, there it is, the moment that Will’s thorny words become brambles, vining through his ribs and twisting so tight he wonders that the pressure doesn’t snap them. How long has it been since someone spoke with him at such length? How long has it been since someone showed interest, rather than curiosity? Or who looked on him not with prying eyes like fingers across his face but at _him_?

How long has it been since Will has been truly seen?

He deserves every fate that has befallen him. No home now, no job. No gentle pack to keep him company, days at a time that pass wherein he feels as little more than a shadow, looked past and through. And still his pride makes him savage, lashing out at the first nearness he’s felt to anyone in months. Years.

No.

Not pride.

Fear.

“I -”

The volume of Will’s voice startles him, but Anthony glances back.

“I was rude,” he says. The word twists a shiver down his spine and he stretches his neck, and ducks his head. “Thank you. For the company and - and the money. Travel safe.”

Another of those smiles, entirely beguiling and just too damn charming, and Anthony ducks his head in a nod, acceptance, pleasure, warmth, it hardly matters. He still looks at Will, not through him.

“And you, stranger," he says, and with another soft look, he turns to leave Will to his day.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Will you order first?”
> 
> Anthony offers a smile to the uncertain - but intrigued - girl behind the counter, and steps closer to Will. “You really needn’t -”
> 
> “I know,” Will whispers, struggling against his own laugh, brimming in his throat, against his own smile to keep his expression stoic. He lifts his eyes, though, bittersweet humor in his words as refined as dark chocolate. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve been able to buy coffee for a good-looking man?” A pause, and he forces his lips thin, the facsimile of a smile. “Or anyone, I guess. Call it novelty.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by our beloved [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)!

“I recall that you must buy a book before you have it signed."

The voice is quiet, and it surprises Will just how happy he is to hear it. It is welcome, even when he is accosted by it in the library, at the back in the farthest corner, caught out reading a book of poetry he claimed he would never read.

He lifts his eyes to regard the poet, his own eyes narrowed, and a different scarf on today. He hasn’t shaved for a few days. The shadow against his jaw suits him and Will finds himself comfortable staring for a moment more, before he sits back and lowers the book to his lap.

“Good thing I had no intention of having it autographed, then.”

Anthony takes a seat beside Will without asking - he doesn’t have to, considering Will moves to cross his leg over the other to accommodate the company. Settling in, Anthony tilts his head.

“Another lie? Unbecoming.”

The tug of a smile appears and is gone again, lost in a subtle discomfort that pulls Will’s shoulders up a little straighter. He’s wearing the same clothes as the day before, a well-worn plaid shirt and dark slacks. He turns his feet to the floor to keep the soles of his shoes out of sight.

“You can sign it if you like,” Will allows, watching to ensure none of the staff are too close and still lowering his voice just above a whisper. “Maybe they’d be pleasantly surprised. Or they’d call it defacement and make you buy it.”

“Risky.”

Will hums a quiet agreement. Fingers still held within the page he was on, his brows knit as he directs his eyes to the book, and the picture of Anthony on the back cover. A sly smile curves his lips in black and white, as if he’s in on a secret of which no one else is aware.

“I’m not the only one,” Will ventures.

“Pleasantly surprised, or that considers me a vandal?”

“Lying,” he answers. His gaze darts quickly to the spread of Anthony’s arms across the back of the couch, and the movement stops. At the teasing accusation, at the look, Will isn’t sure, but as Anthony eases again, so does Will. “Did you miss your flight?”

“I happened to misplace my train ticket,” Anthony shrugs absently. “Perhaps it found its way to one of the other buskers by the bridge.”

The lie is so easy, yet entirely without malice. Will knows the train was not missed for him, yet there is a lingering curiosity as to why it was, at all. Why this man feels the need to sell limericks to passersby when he has a book sold and popular and - from what Will can tell - translated into several languages.

The poetry, he has to admit, is not half-bad.

“And so you came to the library,” Will says. He considers for a beat and brows lifting in such a way that his scars pull tight across cheeks and brow and nose, he adds, “Where I told you I go.”

“When it’s raining,” Anthony grins. “And it is.”

There’s no malice in his tone, nor his open posture - so open, in fact, that Will’s suspicions simmer in his chest. He doesn’t want to think the worst - he has no reason to. But thoughts can carve pathways through the brain, in a sense, when they happen with such frequency and intensity. Will could no more smooth them than he could the marks that mar him.

“Thank you again,” he says, “for -” Anthony lifts a hand before he can finish, and Will lets the words fade on his lips. “I wish I could tell you I squirreled it away for that pair of bootstraps everyone always talks about, but I’ve lied enough already. I had a drink and a sandwich. Prosciutto.”

Nevermind that the drink was a bottle. Nevermind that Will did, in fact, keep as much of the day’s meager earnings as he could, to make up for days like this when he doesn’t get a euro.

“The soup at the shelter -” Will begins, brows knit. He sighs and it almost sounds like a laugh.

“Did you have enough for coffee?”

Will touches his tongue to his lips, and among the ridges of his face, color heats his cheeks.

Anthony hums, brings one of his hands to his lips to rub against them and tilts his head back. He is relaxed, here, as he was by the fountain, uncaring at all for how it would be perceived to sit so near a total stranger, his body language as open as Will’s is closed. Will wonders if he even realizes he does this anymore, or if Anthony has always been this way.

Flitting between person and person, place and place.

Always a poet, head in the clouds.

“Unacceptable that you go uncaffeinated, but I know that were I to ask you would not agree to go with me.”

“Wouldn’t I?”

“Would you?” Anthony offers back, grinning and sitting forward, setting both feet to the floor.

Will studies him for a moment, and wrinkling his nose, shakes his head a little. “I can’t.”

Anthony’s brows draw in, just a little; his lips downturn. It’s strangely reassuring to see that he doesn’t hide his emotions behind charm and effervescence. His disappointment is genuine, for a moment, before he squints a little. “You _can’t_? Or you won’t?”

“Can’t,” Will answers, lifting the book. “Then I’ll never know how the poem ends.”

Anthony blinks, and after a moment laughs, genuine and warm and too-loud for the library, before pressing his fingers to his lips and giving Will a considering look.

“I’m unsure if I should be flattered that you want to finish it, consider it a mild and gentle let down, or offer to give you a live reading so you follow me.”

“You’ve memorized them?”

“After they took me so long to write? Of course,” he chimes, and Will presses his lips together to stifle another smile. He doesn’t want to find the man charming. He can’t begin to imagine how many do, readily, and what he does with that attention. But it’s only as much a complication as Will wants it to be.

He has, after all, become very good at disappearing.

Will lets the book slip closed but hesitates. “I don’t -”

“You’re out of excuses,” Anthony teases, gently.

The smile comes less easily this time, a pensive thing. It might have been simple, once, to let himself go - rare though it was that Will met anyone at all with whom he would want to have coffee. He meets Anthony’s narrowed blue eyes and ready smile for an instant before forcing himself to speak.

“I feel guilty,” he says slowly, “after you’ve already given me what you have. Please don’t pay for me.”

“Then I will watch as you proudly pay for yourself,” Anthony reasons, pushing against his knees to stand, dusting off no dirt at all from his coat before setting his hands into his pockets. “A man’s pride is hardly worth wasting on a cup of coffee.”

He regards Will a moment more, before straightening his shoulders, and in a warm, smooth tone begins to recite the first poem in the book, taking a step back as though to lure Will with him.

“I read that one.”

“I see.” A grin, a press of even white teeth to a flush bottom lip and Anthony begins the next. And the next. And the next as Will lists which he has read, until he reaches the one he had not finished. And only then does Will stand to follow him.

He returns the book to its display as he passes, a murmur of apology and thanks drifting in a whisper to the librarian at the front desk as they go. Will traps his smile behind his hand as he listens to the poet, fingers pressing through overgrown beard - where it does grow, anyway, and hairless shining stripes don’t segment it. And the smile becomes a breath of laughter, just the one, as Anthony takes up an enormous red umbrella from the stand beside the door.

“Getting out of the rain?”

“My umbrella was getting wet,” Anthony answers, opening it grandly as they step out of the library and beneath the grand archways overhead. He holds it aloft for both as they pass marble columns and into the slick grey streets, mirroring gunmetal sky overhead. Will doesn’t fuss, but he puts his hands into his pockets, and tries to feel out the change he has.

“Professional poet is an uncommon trade,” Will notes. “Where did you study?”

“Cambridge,” Anthony replies, seeming utterly delighted by the way the word rolls off his tongue. “Quite the place for inspiration, or its death, depending on how you approached your education.”

Will snorts, shakes his head. “Is this where I ask how you approached yours?”

“Oh, you are good,” the poet grins, directing them with a gentle press against Will’s shoulder with his own to turn left at the first street. “I approached it by avoiding it entirely. You cannot teach one to be a creative writer, one either is or one is not. You may be taught skills, but you can hardly be taught imagination.”

“I’m sure your professors loved you.”

“Oh, to pieces,” Anthony laughs. “Very small ones if they could have gotten away with -” He stops himself, a beat too late, but Will only notices the parallel when Anthony does. Will hears worse, daily, he’s learned Italian words that he never imagined he would. This is not the same, and Anthony finds his stride again. “And you?”

“I thought we were coming to that.”

“Would you rather I talk about myself the entire time?”

“I imagine you could.”

“You’d be right.”

“No need to strain a muscle patting yourself on the back so hard,” Will says, dry. Anthony’s grin is infectious, irresistible. Will would hate him for it had he the energy, and had the man not shown in ways both deliberate and subconscious that - for whatever reason - he genuinely wants Will’s company, and nothing more. “You’re assuming I went to college.”

“I am.”

“George Washington,” Will answers. He could laugh for how unfamiliar it seems, like recalling details from a television show watched years before. Not his own life. Someone else’s. “Forensic science.”

Anthony whistles, just one low, soft note. He licks his lips before checking both ways as they reach a road to cross, to the cafe under a bright yellow awning.

“I suppose you took to study like a duck to water, if that was your vocation.”

“I liked it.”

“Clearly.” The poet waits for Will to step beneath the awning properly before shaking the umbrella out and setting it into the elegant stand by the door, holding it open for Will to pass through at his leisure. “It is both a people-person job and rather the opposite, isn’t it?”

“You certainly encounter interesting personalities,” Will agrees. He does not elaborate. “Takes some of the mystery out of my parlor trick, I suppose.”

He gets looks. He always does, and much like Anthony’s metaphorical duck, the gazes that linger curious on Will slip from him as he passes by. Had he known, though, that he would see the poet again - had he known he would be so near to other people as in the crowded little cafe, he would have worn his other pair of clothes. Cheeks darkening - beneath scars, beneath his beard - Will makes his way to the counter.

It’s too late to do anything about it now.

Reaching into his pocket, he’s careful to show that he has money before ordering. A palmful of euros, quickly separating the one two-euro piece and three one-euro coins from the smaller few. He draws a breath, and closes his hand around them, looking back to Anthony over his shoulder.

“Will you order first?”

Anthony offers a smile to the uncertain - but intrigued - girl behind the counter, and steps closer to Will. “You really needn’t -”

“I know,” Will whispers, struggling against his own laugh, brimming in his throat, against his own smile to keep his expression stoic. He lifts his eyes, though, bittersweet humor in his words as refined as dark chocolate. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve been able to buy coffee for a good-looking man?” A pause, and he forces his lips thin, the facsimile of a smile. “Or anyone, I guess. Call it novelty.”

Anthony regards him a moment more before inclining his head in thanks and turning to place his order. Will keeps as accurate a count as he can, with Anthony’s quick-fire Italian that seems to charm and embarrass the girl at the counter all at once. She taps against the screen before her and then lifts her eyes to Will, or, in truth, just past him.

At least she didn’t wince.

Will swallows and asks just for an Americano, no cream, no sugar, nothing at all but the heat of it. It is embarrassing how glad he is to get change to return to his pocket, little of it as there is. He takes the little number for their table and lets Anthony choose where they go, navigating with much more grace and practice around the already seated patrons - practiced writing senses, perhaps, sniff out the smallest corner table far away from everyone and anyone at all.

Will sighs, and lets his eyes drift around the cafe as they wait. The silence, he finds, is blissfully not awkward, merely there, and when the drinks arrive he snorts. Anthony just lifts an eyebrow, taking up his ridiculous drink that has more cream than coffee in it - if there is coffee at all - to sip.

“And here I worried you’d hold back on my account,” Will observes, wrapping his hands around the coffee to warm them from the summer rain.

“It would have been an insult to your generosity.”

“Meager as it is.”

“Generosity doesn’t have a minimum,” Anthony says. His eyes glitter behind his lashes, always mischievous. Whether he’s uncomfortable with the looks they - Will in particular - get from other patrons, whether he hears the murmurs, isn’t clear. Will would buy him a hundred fancy coffees for that alone, if he could.

“You want to know why I’m here,” Will interjects, gently, as Anthony draws a breath. “In Florence. I want to know why you’re here, in a coffee shop with me.”

“I thought you weren’t a mind-reader.”

“I’m not blind to social cues,” Will says with a shrug, and Anthony’s shoulders shift a little in a laugh before he sits back more comfortably in his chair, licks the cream from his top lip.

“You’re also suspicious.”

“Wouldn’t you be?”

“I suppose I would,” Anthony grins, crossing his arms over his chest and tilting his head to regard Will more closely. “And the only answer I have for you is one I doubt you want to hear.”

“Try me.”

“I find you interesting and your… skill set fascinates me.”

“Am I a study?”

“Hopefully a friend,” Anthony counters, and again Will reads no deception from him, merely a thin layer of tested patience.

Will bites back a remark about how very interesting the other writers would find it to know that Anthony had been spending his time with a homeless man. Scarred all to hell but practically psychic, educated and destitute, all those wonderful cliches that writers, Will imagines, must live to frame in words that stalwartly refuse to pity someone so noble.

Courageous.

Inspirational.

Blah blah blah.

He doesn’t say it, because however much Will expects it to be true - suspicious indeed - he has not thought, let alone heard, the word _friend_ directed towards himself in years. As with buying the coffee, sharing an umbrella, listening to Anthony’s poetry, it is a gentle game of pretend that Will does not yet want to stop playing. His fingers tighten against the cup and he finally lifts it, savoring his first slow sip.

“I don’t know why I came here,” Will says, teeth set against the rolled rim of his cup, lips brushing uneven over it as he speaks. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

“From - where were you?”

“Maryland,” Will says, then, with a quick shake of his head, “no. Virginia. Florida.”

“It sounds like you don’t know where you were coming from, either.”

At this, Will sighs another of those near-laughs, just a longer breath than the others.

“And you came to Florence,” Anthony coaxes, gently, but without hiding the push.

“Someone I knew once used to live here,” he says. “A long time ago. Before I knew him. I thought he might be here again.”

Anthony takes another sip of his drink, licks more froth from his lip and settles his fingers against the edge of his cup as he sets it to the table, eyes on it, narrowed a little, before his smile grows and he lifts his eyes to Will. “You don’t seem like the hopeless romantic type.”

“Hardly.”

“And yet you came to a country where you don’t speak the language, where you have no home or job, to seek out a person who may or may not be here, going by what you knew of them… before you knew them.”

It’s so rare as to be a luxury when Will has room to pity someone, rather than be pitied. He listens to Anthony, he nods as he speaks, but something in his face changes at the words. It isn’t anger, furrowing his brows, or insult, setting his jaw. It’s closer to the pang of pain that pulled Will’s lips thin when he stood up from the marble fountain steps with an aching back.

A lingering hurt, familiar and constant.

“Romance has nothing to do with it,” Will says. It isn’t a lie, though once it might have been. “Neither of our drinks will last long enough for this.”

“Then give me that long, at least,” Anthony smiles. “I promise I won’t turn you into a poem.”

Will ducks his head, cup against his cheek, masking the quick grin that appears and blinks out again, a firefly glow in the darkness. Will's cup clicks to the table again. “You assume I had a home and a job before.”

“Did you not?”

“Not before I came here.”

“But _before_ before.”

“Of course,” Will says. “And then I didn’t. I had empty rooms and a few photographs. Empty dog dishes. Emptier bottles. A legacy spanning only backwards, never forwards. Stopped, suddenly, as if I were already dead.”

“You had dogs?”

Will snorts. “Of all the things -”

“That actually tells me a lot more about you than the fact that you drank or chose to be homeless,” Anthony points out, smiling as he considers his coffee again, and, Will notes, does not take it up. “How people treat animals, or those that have multiple animals, are a specific type of person. One can claim empathy to the high heavens and be a liar. You, on the other hand, have now proven yourself not to be.”

“In everything?”

“I would hardly give you so much credit, you are human.”

Will sips his own coffee, and tilts his head gently aside. “Unfortunately,” he says. “With all the capabilities to suffer love as greatly as loss.”

“The two are often intertwined.”

“Always,” Will corrects. He drums his fingers against the cup. It’s a nervous tic, but he doesn’t bother to hide it. He thinks back to the day before, beside the fountain, and how displayed he felt to have another claim to see his heart. No more could he stitch himself shut from that than he’s ever been able to before, and so he doesn’t bother with the desperate, futile attempt to suture close wounds that have yet to heal.

That never will.

“Seven,” Will says. “I had seven dogs. I had a home. I had a family. I had -” He stops short. There is a difference between knowing that one’s heart is bared, and wounding it deliberately. “I hope that you never have to think of your life in past tense,” he says instead.

The poet watches him carefully, gives him the space to speak and recover after, gives him the time to find his rhythm again. There is no judgement in his gaze, and although it softens from his teasing demeanor to something slightly more sad, Will feels no pity there.

It is as unusual as it is welcome.

He nearly startles when Anthony moves to pick up his coffee again, and wonders for a moment how long both of them had been lost in thought and silence together in the cafe. After a long thoughtful sip, Anthony sets his cup between both hands, and into his lap.

“I hope, sincerely, that you can pause long enough to let life catch up to you, and you can narrate it in the present tense again,” he tells him.

Will accepts the words without argument. What is there to debate? He hopes for the same, however distantly. He hasn’t yet ended the story himself, despite countless nights when he has considered nothing else.

“I worry,” he says, “that I’ve run out of chances. Like a cat on its ninth life. The first time, I recovered. I moved, went to school, and found a new path diverted from the one before. I met him and I stumbled, but so did he. That was the second time. I fought to find him, angry that he split the path again. Eventually I got comfortable on it, I thought maybe this time, it’s the right one. Maybe this time we - I - I can move forward without being lost. It didn’t work. And so the third time -"

“The last time,” Anthony clarifies.

Will nods, a quick jerk of his head. “I stopped. Moving forward, trying to recover. A personal purgatory neither ascended nor cast down.”

He draws a breath, and offers a bent smile.

“My poetry isn’t as good as yours,” Will says.

“You would be surprised how beautiful real experiences are, narrated as they are, but that’s hardly what you’re asking, is it?" Anthony shrugs, and lifts his eyes with a crooked smile to Will again. He brings his cup to his lips again, watching Will over the rim of it as Will brings up his own. They don’t speak again, for a good long while, until there are just dregs of cream in Anthony’s cup, and a rim of dark water at the bottom of Will’s.

“Coffee’s done,” Will says quietly, and Anthony looks up from his reverie, offering a smile as Will pushes his chair back to stand.

“Thank you for it,” he says, not moving to do the same. “Perhaps next time I’ll buy the round. Earn your name in payment for it.”

Will regards him for a moment, before turning his gaze to the rain outside. “There’s power in names.”

“So goes the cliche,” Anthony smiles. “I told you I wouldn’t make a poem of you. Nor anything more than a friend, maybe. I’ve already copped to that.”

With a softness in his eyes, betraying the smile Will already works to mute again, he offers his hand. Anthony takes it, slender fingers wrapping firm. They shake.

“Will Graham,” he says, with a curious lilt of amusement in his voice.

Anthony mouths the name and memorizes it, his own expression gentling in turn. “Pulling back the curtain, inch by inch,” he muses. “A few more cups of coffee and you’ll have snuffed the mystery altogether.”

“I have that effect. I’d thank you with a sense of permanence in parting, but you’re going to find me again, aren’t you?”

To this, Anthony touches a finger to the tip of his own nose. Will relinquishes a laugh behind his hand before tucking it into his pocket. Careful steps through the other patrons carry him from the cafe, and Anthony watches as he stands beneath the awning a moment more before stepping out into the rain.

He counts off two minutes, and then takes up his phone. The contact is listed under his assumed name, not the one given to Anthony in conspiratorial confidence, and the remnants of their last conversation disappear up the screen as Anthony types to Dr. Fell:

_He misses you._


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“That need defines him. It’s as if he’s found a small foothold overlooking a chasm. He could slip. He likely will. But focusing on the little bit of ground beneath his feet is distraction from the void beneath. Were he on solid ground -”_
> 
> _“He would be forced to acknowledge it.”_
> 
> _"And what, precisely, would he be acknowledging, Hannibal?" Anthony asks._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by our darling [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)!

It takes three weeks before Will’s resolve breaks.

When it does, Will blames it on another week of ceaseless rain, impending autumn cold, and a coffee cup more often empty than occupied. The shakes set in enough that he finally breaks, and steals a flask of liquor to stop his heart from rattling. The thunder in his stomach hardly registers.

It’s all of those things.

It’s Anthony, too.

Despite Will’s insistence that he’s fine, that friends - if Anthony insists on using that word - shouldn’t have to give money to friends, the poet still seeks him out. In sheltered corners, once the monastery asked him to leave for the bottle they found, in the library, beside the fountain. Always, Will asks him if he missed another train.

Always, the answer is yes.

“Dinner,” he says. “I insist upon it.”

“I’m fine -”

“I know,” Anthony interjects with a laugh, as though Will’s protest were a non sequitur. “But friends should have each other over for dinners, shouldn’t they? I insist upon it.”

Hunger. Alcohol. Shelter.

Company.

Will can’t even find the energy in himself to feel guilt for his acceptance.

At least, not until he sees the apartment, with high painted ceilings and ochre tiles upon the floor. It is lush, with rich wood shades and earthen tones, intermingling antiquity and modernity in old-world ceramic and shining new stainless steel. With his hand against the wall, Will lingers in the wide, arched kitchen doorway, and shakes his head.

“I feel like I’ve been here before.”

“More hints with every meeting,” Anthony muses, not addressing the issue further beyond holding up an empty wine glass for Will to nod at or decline as he wishes. He nods. Anthony bends to reach for whatever he has stored beneath the counter and Will regards the space again.

It makes his skin prickle like he’s being watched, as at the same time he feels a strange nostalgia, a longing for the comfort of shiny chrome and rustic aesthetic. He seeks for the wall of living herbs Hannibal kept in his kitchen and breathes a slow deep sigh when he does not find one.

He isn’t there anymore.

He won’t be again.

_”You’ll forgive me my lack of knowledge regarding wine?” Anthony says, standing again, hip cocked as he holds up a bottle for inspection. “Despite my rather well-presented exterior my taste in wine ranges between white and red.”_

_Before him, Hannibal offers a thin smile but waves at the wine for Anthony to pour it. “Another area in which I need educate you.”_

_“You’ll have an easy time of it,” Anthony snorts. “If it tastes good I’ll drink it.”_

_“One must do more than drink. One must appreciate.”_

_“And yet no amount of formalized appreciation can capture the first -” Anthony grimaces, uncorking the wine with a pop. “The first sensation of taste. That is the realm of -”_

_“Poetry?”_

_Anthony grins, and tilts the bottle towards the glasses._

_“So claims the uninitiated,” Hannibal suggests, accepting the first glass with an incline of his head. Amusement gathers the corners of his eyes as he breathes it in. “Through appreciation, you are rewarded with a vocabulary to describe the experience, and a deeper understanding of the process behind what one perceives.”_

_“Far be it from me to doubt the benefits of education,” Anthony yields, one hand uplifted as he takes up his wine with the other, and turns to rest his back against the counter. “Teach me, professor - what is the process behind what I perceive in your friend?”_

_For an instant, Hannibal’s whole being seems motionless. From expression to the very pulse beneath his skin, a heartbeat holds, and then he lifts his eyes. “You must first tell me what you perceive.”_

_Anthony sips slowly, licking his lower lip into his mouth to draw the bead of crimson from it._

“Refill as you like,” he offers, averting his eyes from the subtle trembling as Will lifts his glass to drink in kind. “There’s more beyond that.”

“You live alone?” Will asks, edging towards the sitting room. In reality, it’s all one enormous room, with archways rather than doors, kitchen to dining room to living room. Stairs curl upward to a second floor and Will feels his stomach spiral, too.

“I try,” Anthony laughs. Will startles when the poet touches a palm to his back, gripping his wine so as not to drop it. He steps forward to mask balking so hard at the touch. He drinks to mask the longing that twists his lungs empty from being touched again at all.

“If I can help with dinner,” he offers, “or the dishes after - or if you’d like me to wash up before -” Will stops the stammer of words, shoulders shifting and cheeks darkening. Still, his nose wrinkles, and he smiles, apologetic. “I was never very good at being a guest.”

"That is all a matter of practice," the poet replies, gesturing widely with his glass, entirely graceful and at ease. It would be simple enough to channel him, and feel that calmness fill Will just as easily.

But it would hardly be genuine. It would hardly be his own.

And he needs to practice.

"And that I will certainly give you." Anthony continues, grinning. "I need someone to be my guinea pig. New meals and old favorites."

"So am I a guest or a guinea pig?" Will asks, wry, and finds Anthony's smile widening, warming.

"Are they mutually exclusive?"

"Depends on your definition, I suppose. Consider it... a game of tastes and flavors, rather than an experiment."

“If you play with cooking the same way you do with words, it’ll be an interesting evening,” Will allows. He lets their eyes meet, for a moment. He lets his attention drift across the poet’s face a moment more. A beat too long maybe, and hesitant to allow more curiosity than that, Will turns back to his glass.

_”Suspicious, always,” Anthony begins. “He wouldn’t tell me his name. He turns away from attention that he, I suppose, has to seek.”_

_“It finds him, unwanted,” Hannibal says._

_“Difficult to avoid, I imagine. He’s quite stubborn. More than once he refused - or tried to refuse - money and food despite his need. I don’t know that it’s entirely pride.”_

_Hannibal’s brow raises, incrementally, and Anthony’s furrows._

_“That need defines him. It’s as if he’s found a small foothold overlooking a chasm. He could slip. He likely will. But focusing on the little bit of ground beneath his feet is distraction from the void beneath. Were he on solid ground -”_

_“He would be forced to acknowledge it.”_

_"And what, precisely, would he be acknowledging, Hannibal?" Anthony asks him, tone carefully clear, almost entirely indifferent if not for his focus on the man before him. "What could possibly drive a man with a career, once, a family, once, a life, I'm assuming, with all of that, to find a foothold somewhere so precarious?"_

_Hannibal considers him, one of the only friends he has, in this country, in any country, and turns away before taking the nose of his wine, savoring smell of it, the depth of flavor, and only then taking a sip._

_It seems almost answer enough, but Anthony waits._

_"I lost him once," Hannibal says at last, "when we had been close to leaving certain obstacles behind, for Florence. I felt it better, at the time, to sever rather than repair." The doctor spreads his fingers up the stem of the glass. "I fear, now, that neither of us have done well, so amputated of the other."_

_“You don’t seem so bad off,” Anthony notes, lifting his glass a little. “By compare.”_

_The tension in Hannibal’s features is only a flicker, the shadow of moth wings against a flame, there and gone again. He does not let it reappear, nor allow the beating of wings to grow stronger. The wine sours on his tongue as he takes another sip._

_“Not everyone wears their injuries outwardly,” he finally says._

_Guileless, Anthony’s amusement - however dire - plays bare. “You’ve seen him, then.”_

_“No, but I am aware of the nature of that particular chasm.”_

_“Perhaps you’d like to share,” Anthony coaxes, stretching wide to ease his own tension, and leaning lax once more. A moment passes, and his glass clicks to the counter. The poet turns it slowly, fitting it into a tile square. “Was it you?”_

"No."

Anthony laughs, brows up in genuine amusement as he regards Will where he stands.

"You’ve never had escargot?"

"They remind me more of the lures I used, not the fish I caught," Will says, grinning into his glass, warmed and made confident by the wine within it, nearly empty.

"That’s hardly an astute judgement. There must be a reason so many people consume them daily."

"Some people eat very strange things, should we emulate them?"

Anthony’s eyes narrow in pleasure. "Where's your sense of adventure, Will?"

Will snorts, shakes his head and brings a hand to his face again, rubbing there slowly. He could answer, could bring up every single thing that had brought him to eating fish almost exclusively for years. He could. But the wine is warm and the company is welcome and so he tilts the glass back to finish it and graces Anthony with a crooked smile.

"Perhaps at the bottom of another glass."

He follows Anthony to the kitchen area again, and wine refilled, leans back against the counter to watch him at work. No scarf, finally, just a simple - expensive - eggplant-dark button-down with the sleeves pushed up. For a moment Will considers that he shouldn’t lean against the counter. He shouldn’t touch anything. He slept outside the night before and pulls his lower lip between his teeth as he wonders - again, always - what would possess someone to want him for a dinner guest.

His shoulders loosen and his stomach tightens as Anthony turns a slight smile to him, and Will can’t recall the last time he felt such warmth carry in his pulse.

“I bet I’ve had things you’ve never had,” Will ventures, setting his glass aside to make use of the kitchen sink and at least wash his hands. “Alligator.”

Anthony’s laugh, good wine, the scent of jasmine-sweet soap - Will is nearly dizzy with it.

“You’ve got me,” the poet answers. “Where on Earth?”

“Louisiana. Bayou area, outside New Orleans. I grew up there, for a little while.”

“And then?”

“Other places.”

“Less alligators?”

“Far less,” Will grins, drying his hands on a soft towel. “At least then you’ve got the comfort of knowing you’re eating something that could have eaten you.”

“One could say the same for snails.”

“And many other things besides,” Will muses, taking up his wine once more.

_”Resilient. Far too determined for his own good, sometimes,” Anthony says, shrugging and turning to look out the window for a while, as Hannibal stands before him, closer, now, and keeps his own eyes on his wine. For a while they don’t speak, comfortable in their silence and contemplation, then Anthony sighs. “Too good for you, I would venture.”_

_“Would you?”_

_“Why?” Anthony turns back to him, brows up. “Will you make me eat my words?” There is accusation there but not anger, a strange protectiveness for a man he had only met several weeks before, on behest of a man he had met only a year back, himself._

_Hannibal’s lips tilt just a little but the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. He shakes his head. “I can hardly argue.”_

_“But you still want him?”_

_“I need to make amends.”_

_“And?”_

_Drawing in a long breath, Hannibal considers the_ and _. He has before, of course, he has had nothing but years to play out every potential scenario that might unfold. None seems likelier than any other. Indeed, few at all seem possible, resting on the fragile pretense that amends could ever truly be made, let alone accepted._

_Anthony takes the silence in stride, and with a swallow of wine. “This is more than friendship, isn’t it? Perhaps I’ve been an unconscionably poor one, but to sacrifice so much - as he has, as you claim to have yourself -” He sucks wine from his bottom lip, eyes narrowed and a slight smile on his lips. “It’s more.”_

_Hannibal hums, and nods gently in acquiescence._

_“Much,” he says._

_The truth of it is welcome. Anthony settles a little, but he does not press for more detail than that. He can guess, he has already, but always with the sensation of stepping onto brittle ice above deep water. He does not need to know what lies beneath it to know that he does not want to tread further._

_But his expression troubles again, softly. “Will this hurt him?”_

_Hannibal considers this, too, and with another slow sigh he finishes the wine in his glass, no longer a taste for it, but a necessary motion to busy his hands, to keep his words swallowed, before he spills them._

_“Doesn’t love always?” Hannibal asks finally. After a moment, Anthony takes up his glass again to finish his own wine, before setting the glass aside on the counter with a click._

“I have chicken,” Anthony finally announces, bending back over the counter for the wine again, to refill for them both. They are pleasantly buzzed now, comfortably warm, and Will finds that he no longer notices the pull of his skin when he smiles. He doesn’t need to, because Anthony doesn’t either. “For the less adventurous. And for my rather inexperienced and truly non-creative dinner plans.”

“You sure know how to spoil a guy.”

“Once in a while, I am full of surprises.”

More wine, more smiles, and Anthony moves around further into the kitchen before cursing softly and gesturing for Will to make himself comfortable either in the kitchen or the sitting room. 

“And a terrible host for not bringing up more wine. Sit.”

Will watches as Anthony skims his hands against his trousers, smoothing them despite their already lying snug and flat against his long legs. He watches as his hands then go to his hair, dark as bourbon but streaked with silvery threads. Will watches, but the wine eases his own reflective tension down to the burgeoning warmth in his belly.

Anthony is nervous.

Will is, too.

“You really don’t need to go overboard,” Will tells him, even as he obediently makes his way to the couch. “My standards are remarkably low in -”

He stops. The wine stem nearly cracks in his hand, and around him, the well-appointed room swims to a blur. His lungs paralyze, breath caught in the unmoving muscles of his throat, as before him stands a ghost, ashen-haired and pale-skinned.

Sharp cheekbones and scarlet eyes.

Beneath them, a soft smile curves.

“Hello, Will.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“I came here to find you,” Will tells him, mindless now of how hideous his smile curves, “because I hoped that you would -”_
> 
> _Another step in silence and Will presses his fingers hard against his eyes to see stars, to see anything but the soft smile of this man in the mornings, drawing his lips up enough to reveal his teeth, crooked and entirely suited to him. To see anything but the way his hips had swayed to the jazz Will had put on, once, in Wolf Trap when they were too warm with wine and too far gone to care. To see anything but_ him _, anything but Hannibal as the man Will loved._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by our beloved [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)!

Will finds only strength enough for a breath. Tectonic plates shift beneath his feet and threaten to unseat him, the room, the house, the world as Will has come to know it and still he can’t take his eyes from the man before him. At the epicenter of it all Will’s heart cracks anew, and with his one breath, the little gasp that cannot fill his flattened lungs, he speaks to Anthony.

“Go.” A seismic shift, beginning as no more than a harsh whisper heralding imminent destruction. “Go, now.”

Anthony doesn’t move, and he doesn’t look at Will, he looks at Hannibal. His expression sits somewhere between apology and sadness, exhausted sadness.

“I will,” he says. “This is not my conversation to interrupt.” He swallows, a careful little sound and licks his lips. “Will you tell him?”

Hannibal’s eyes don’t move from Will, unable to, taking in every new scar and sinew against him, finding beauty in every single one. Slowly, he nods.

Only then does Will’s attention splinter. An unspoken question, its answer agonizingly apparent, parts his lips as he meets Anthony’s gaze. The fault forms and with it a gaping hole of dire understanding.

“You knew,” Will says. Only a soft snap betrays the broken glass held white-knuckled in Will’s hand, blood pooling warm and dark as wine in his palm. He looks to it slowly, comprehending the reality of cutting pain at least, caused as much by himself as the one that threatens to sunder him in half. “I should have -” he manages, words slicing sharp. “No. Of course not.”

Anthony turns away and a low laugh shakes from Will, spanning his other hand across his face to block out the sight of them both, to hide himself from them in turn.

He doesn’t flinch when Anthony returns, with a wet towel to take up the glass and dab away the blood, but he doesn’t accept the attention. Why, when it’s not genuine or meant for him anyway? Anthony doesn’t try to justify anything, but he does give Hannibal a look, a look enough to make the older man duck his eyes as though chastized.

Unusual.

Unfamiliar.

Strangely welcome.

Then, Anthony turns to go.

“Are you done?” Will finally asks, eyes up to Hannibal as Anthony moves away into the kitchen and doesn’t return. “Are you finally done?”

“With what, Will?”

Will’s smile snarls slow, but he can hardly bring his eyes near the man. Some remnant from childhood, that if he cannot see his face, his own too can’t be seen. As if it matters, now. As if it ever did.

“It wouldn’t be right if you didn’t get to hear it, would it?” He breathes a dry sound, a landslide laugh. “You know I started to think you wouldn’t. What - what could possibly be greater punishment than to let me live?”

He lifts a hand as Hannibal’s lips part.

“But that’s not enough of a victory for you, no. Not even then. Knowing you took everything,” Will says, jaw set tight and scars pulled shining. “Everything but this. Unfinished business. Loose ends. One last thread of power to pluck for yourself.”

Hannibal watches him, expression not one of gloating or victory, not one of cat-like pleasure. He looks tired. There are bags under his eyes where once he had been impeccably well-kept. He is gaunter, as Will is, from prison, from the flight after, the hiding, the constant stress of staying ahead of the FBI and other interested parties.

He does not step forward, and nor does Will, and for a moment, Will wonders if Hannibal will speak at all.

“I tried to sever you from me, when you sent me away,” Hannibal murmurs. “I tried to distance, and detach. But the closer I came, the more I realized that such a detachment would have to be permanent, to be at all effective.”

Will laughs again, a harsh sound like a grating piece of metal, and shakes his head. “You certainly made a good go of it, Hannibal, you were so close, too. And them? What about _them_ , Hannibal?” The fire boils as he has not let it for months, years, indignation not at the attempt on his own life - that, he’s aware, well aware, he deserves - but on theirs.

“My child, Hannibal, my _wife_?”

“I did not mean -”

“You _never_ mean, Hannibal. You never _mean_ , do you. But you are always there to watch the blissful aftermath.”

“Had you gone, I would have gone as well,” Hannibal interrupts him, just a subtle raising of his voice to be heard. His tone does not change, there is no anger there. There is anguish and softness.

Hope.

“I could not have stayed, had you gone.”

“No,” Will whispers, squeezing tighter the towel in his hand, as if by digging in that last piece of glass he might speak his words as strongly as he bleeds. “No.”

But Hannibal doesn’t lie. He bends. He obfuscates. He twists and warps and omits, but he doesn’t lie. Against his own desires, Will imagines it. In accordance with them, he can’t stop. Elegant fingers folding starched, stiff sheets together. The movement of his shoulders as the makeshift rope is cast. His lips parting on a gentle sigh -

“Please,” Will says, and he seeks the wall beside him with the hand that then presses to his face. “I don’t -”

He doesn’t want to see Hannibal this way, older by decades, the polish worn from him.

He doesn’t want for Hannibal to see him, monstrous and malformed, his face scraped clean with mirror-shard glass.

Guilt chokes him, an ugly sound that breaks in his throat. How many years living with a mantra-turned-meaningless? _I should have gone, I should have stayed, I should have, I could have, we could have, together…_ Hannibal’s step forward carries no sound, but the magnitude of his presence increases, and the skittering surface waves of Will’s heart undulate faster.

“I came here to find you,” Will tells him, mindless now of how hideous his smile curves, “because I hoped that you would -”

Another step in silence and Will presses his fingers hard against his eyes to see stars, to see anything but the soft smile of this man in the mornings, drawing his lips up enough to reveal his teeth, crooked and entirely suited to him. To see anything but the way his hips had swayed to the jazz Will had put on, once, in Wolf Trap when they were too warm with wine and too far gone to care. To see anything but _him_ , anything but Hannibal as the man Will loved.

He wants to see the monster but he can’t, through his own scars, because he was the one that said no, he was the one that didn’t go when he should have, when Hannibal had waited, when he had made a place for them and allowed the shattered cup to come together.

Another step and Will flinches, does not uncurl his hand as Hannibal’s warm fingers seek to, searching for the shard of glass still buried deep within his palm to remove it, to tie the towel around the wound properly.

“I sought for you,” Hannibal tells him, gently. “I saw you by the fountain and at the library, through the windows, between the shelves, and I was too much a coward to approach. I feared you would not hear me, if you let me near at all.”

“Please -”

“Anthony was wary, he was so wary of letting me near, until I told him why I had to, why I asked at all.”

Will makes a noise, quiet pain cracking raw. Hannibal's hands still against his own but it isn't this fresh wound that seeps agony through the younger man's frail form. When he makes to let go, Will's fingers clench on reflex.

Old pathways trod deep, irreversible as river-carved canyons.

"I thought that he -"

"I know," Hannibal says, to staunch the flow. "It was unfair."

"Unrealistic."

"No," comes the gentle answer, and Will swallows back the sound that floods forth.

In inches, he lifts his eyes. Hannibal's shirt hangs loose on his frame. His hunger is not Will's - physical and base. His is one of the heart, the soul, ravening for the only one who has ever filled him. His throat shows a swallow beneath the slow scrutiny; his jaw flickers tension. Hannibal's lips part as Will's gaze reaches them.

Will recalls the taste of strawberry ice cream, kissed from Hannibal's mouth during a firefly dusk in Wolf Trap.

"I'd have thrown a book at you," Will decides, bleak humor pulling at the lean lines of his face.

Hannibal’s smile tilts the corners of his lips down and his brows together, but he does not reach yet for Will’s face, not without his permission, even here. He sighs instead, eyes down to watch Will’s lips as Will watches his. He thinks of the warmth of whiskey and coffee against them, fed to him from a smiling mouth and with teasing words alongside.

“I’d have deserved it,” Hannibal replies softly. One more step brings him close enough to share the warm shuddering breaths Will pulses against him, and with a slow closing of his eyes, in trust, he leans close to nuzzle his nose against Will’s.

“God, I missed you,” he breathes.

Will’s body goes still, but for his startled heart and windswept breath. His eyes slip closed slowly, warily, into a familiar darkness that now seems luminous. Just there, against his nose, he can feel him. Bare skin not thickened by marks, soft skin not made dense with suffering. Just there, inside his chest, he can feel him. Hannibal presses between spaces snarled with scar tissue, finding a tenderness that somehow, somehow still remains.

“You shouldn’t -”

“I missed you,” Hannibal says again, and Will’s knees quake at the sensation of whispered words across his cheek.

“I’m - I’m not clean -”

“I missed you.”

Will’s protest dies weak in his throat and with a shaking hand he grasps Hannibal’s shirt to pull him closer and keep himself standing. He turns his head enough, just enough to feel Hannibal’s mouth against his cheek. Phantom nerve-endings spark to painful life like fallen powerlines and Will knows he’s being kissed.

“Every hour of every goddamn day,” Will whispers.

Hannibal hums and it is as raw as the scars awakening to burning life against Will’s skin, just as aching, Hannibal wearing his glass shards on the inside, where they never stop seeping or bleeding. Will clutches harder to Hannibal’s shirt, to his hand, and turns his face a little more, feeling Hannibal’s lips brush just against the corner of his mouth, parting his lips as Hannibal’s part.

They are meant to fit, they always have, in breath and form and struggle, too. They are meant for this, through hell and fire. A severance of communication would be an amputation, would cripple them - has, already. And they are now starting to piece back together.

Will knows the sensation of nerves rejoining - disparate pieces linking back together. A necessary agony of wholeness, reweaving alongside muscle, bone, and skin.

Hannibal’s hand comes up to cup Will’s other cheek and his lips close in a gentle kiss against the corner of Will’s mouth, as he shudders with the sensation. He smells of exhaustion and sweat, expensive wine and cheap liquor beneath. Beneath it all he smells like Will, familiar and warm, sandalwood and motor oil.

“I’m sorry I took so long.”

Will blinks, vision blurring, and draws back just enough to see Hannibal’s face. His fingers lift and tenderly seek out the familiar curve of his cheekbone beneath his eye. The long bridge of his nose and scar across its middle. Bow-shaped lips that part when Will’s fingertip crosses them. And there are new features in their broken terrain, though Will was host to the epicenter. Lines furrow between Hannibal’s nose and the corners of his mouth. The planes of his cheeks have hollowed into smooth basins.

He is beautiful.

He has always been.

In all his moments of grace and monstrosity, civility and savagery, murder and mercy, he could never be anything less.

“I missed a lot of appointments,” Will finally says, fingertips pressed to Hannibal’s chin. “I think you’re allowed to be late this once.”

“And just this once it will be,” Hannibal murmurs, and as Will takes a breath to reply, he presses their lips together. Soft as it was not the first time, intimate as it grew to be with time and patience and determination to hold this and cherish it. Will shivers as Hannibal tastes him again, over the smooth scar tissue and against the lips that never quite healed. He does not find that a hindrance, they still fit as they did before, as though nothing there has changed at all.

Then Hannibal brings his hands up to cup Will’s face, one still sticky with blood, and holds him still, and with a soft sound presses close to kiss him deeper.

In his shirtfront, Will’s fingers tighten. The weight of Hannibal has not changed, not like this, a body that no matter how much time had passed Will knows as well as his own - better, perhaps, after so long alienated from his own skin. Will parts his lips trembling and whimpers low against Hannibal’s tongue, his mouth, his acceptance, his apology.

There is comfort in their shared weakness, no longer a battle of dominance and strength, no longer a cold-war wager of who will blink first. They have both blinked. They have both been destroyed. And still embers of hearthfire flicker to life as Will feels his face touched by warm hands for the first time in years. And still they stoke each other brighter as Will slips thin arms around Hannibal’s neck.

Will turns his head away to breathe, panting shallow but yielding no distance. He feels his breath pool against Hannibal’s cheek, and squeezes tighter.

“I should have come again to see you,” he whispers. “I should have gone with you -”

When he is hushed, he accepts it. Lowering to his heels, Will clears heat from his eyes with quick fingers and for a moment is surprised that they are not in his living room, the bed beside and dogs seated at their feet. He blinks again and Baltimore vanishes, with its velvet couches and steep dark stairs. The wood that presses to his back is not that, but an arched doorway. Will shudders a sigh and shakes his head, brow furrowed.

“I should go -”

“Where?”

“I don’t - I’m not -” Will laughs, breathless and warm and turns his forehead against Hannibal’s cheek. “It would hardly do to do this here.”

“I was going to invite you upstairs,” Hannibal reasons, his words warming with a smile that Will knows spreads just against the corners of his eyes, not yet to his mouth. He does not let go of him. Will does not let go of Hannibal.

“Not even British hospitality would allow for that kind of breach,” Will murmurs, and then he does feel the smile, warming his forehead where he turns it.

“Anthony doesn’t live here,” Hannibal points out gently, entire too amused. “And my European hospitality has no problem with it, in my home.”

Will nods, reflexive, because of course it is. Because of course Hannibal had resources set aside. Because of course he knew he would come here with an appointed space waiting -

“I thought it was familiar,” Will says, to quiet his own thoughts. “You’ve cut down on the taxidermy.”

The sensation of knuckles against his cheek startles Will, just a quick jerk, and he lifts his eyes to Hannibal who says only, “I’ve lost the taste for it.”

Will would laugh if he wasn’t reasonably certain that it would quickly become a sob. He loosens his arms, lets his hands fall. With a soft-eyed look to Hannibal, Will turns from him towards the kitchen. As jarring as the house, as their kiss, as seeing Hannibal, Will’s synapses snap discordant as he takes in the poet, standing stoic beside his bottle of wine.

There is a small smile, enough only to tighten the muscles at the corners of his lips but not to draw up the warm creases around his eyes. His fingers linger on the bottle before he grasps it and slips it with a quiet scrape from the counter. Shoulders straight and chin up, he’s taller than Hannibal, and Will wonders why he didn’t notice before.

“Gentlemen,” he murmurs, tilting the bottle towards them, moving around the counter towards the door.

“Anthony -”

“Be _kind_ to him,” Anthony interrupts, cutting off Will’s voice but glaring at Hannibal when he says it. “For Christ’s sake.” Then his expression eases, back to something familiar, almost fond, before he looks away and brings the bottle to his lips to take another sip. “Remember, I know where you live.”

“And you have the keys,” Hannibal reminds him, words warming. “Thank you, again.”

“Sod off.”

He doesn’t look back, and lets himself out. With another silent step, Hannibal moves up behind Will and sets his lips against his temple in a soft kiss.

“Upstairs to the bath, I think,” he whispers.

Will tilts towards the kiss, an almost involuntary response that after the fact he’s surprised still exists in him. Gaze focused on the door, his brow furrows.

“If I went after him,” Will asks, his stomach tightening along the scar that curves across, “what would you do?”

Hannibal’s throat clicks, and Will’s eyes hood heavy as Hannibal sighs in thought against his cheek. Strong hands frame his arms and skim up along his shoulders. Will tenses, he draws a breath to fill his chest for when those same strong hands will close around his throat -

They ease back down again, stroking gently.

“Then I would be glad,” Hannibal tells him, “that we shared one last moment between us, and I would remember this time.”

Only then does Will breathe again, turning towards Hannibal to follow.

Hannibal guides him upstairs, directs him to the left, and when Will goes, he takes his time to go to the door, to look through it even though Anthony is long gone from the landing, with the wine and his thoughts. He wonders what he could ever do to repay the only other person he has ever genuinely considered a friend.

When he follows Will upstairs, he finds him standing in the doorway of the large bedroom, still dressed, arms crossed against his middle and head ducked. Hannibal thinks of a scene much like this. But Will’s shoulders were straight and he stood before the stream, down to his underwear, before he turned to look at Hannibal over his shoulder and hooked his thumbs in the waistband, bending to bare himself.

He thinks of how he had sunk gracefully to his knees behind Will, still bent, and kissed his skin.

“I think the warm water would do us both good,” he says.

Had Will any sense of cosmic justice anymore, it would seem shockingly cruel. Whether he gave up his home or simply stopped paying for a place that felt like a prison is a matter of semantics. Without work enough to afford it, with laughable damages from the Bureau - he was, after all, an independent investigator - it hardly matters.

And here lay Hannibal, for weeks, months - potentially a year considering the date on the newspaper clipping that Will keeps, heralding his escape. Before Will is an enormous bed, covered in cool linens and a big fat comforter. No longer blues and creams, Will notes, but rich rosewoods and cabernet reds. Maybe it means something. Maybe not. Low lights cast gold from low lamps. Curtains rest heavy across a window that Will knows - from his cursory and wary glance across the front of the building - has a balcony.

Will shakes his head and turns, but doesn’t step towards the door as inclined when Hannibal stands before him. His arms tighten and he forces a sigh, trying desperately to make it sound like a laugh.

It doesn’t really work.

“I must smell terrible to you. To most people, but especially you.”

“You smell tired,” Hannibal corrects him, stepping around Will carefully to set an example to follow, moving his hands over the buttons of his shirt as he walks towards the bathroom ensuite. “You could use the water to soothe you to sleep.”

“Do you dream?” Will asks him, taking a small step forward, following.

“When my mind allows me to sleep, yes,” Hannibal replies, divesting himself of his shirt and hanging it over the handle of the door, the most casual Will has ever seen him outside of Wolf Trap, where some mornings his fancy shirts would be found wrinkled beneath the weight of a snuffling dog. It’s familiar and not, changed and the same, and the dissonance makes Will’s teeth hurt and his hands shake.

He needs a drink. He won’t ask until he has to.

Toeing off his shoes, Will ducks to set them beside the bedroom door. Outside of it. A little down the hall, closer to the stairs. He quickly jerks his socks free and stuffs them inside, returning on bare feet just as Hannibal makes a curious sound.

The smile Will manages is small but genuine, and he sets his fingers to his shirt.

“I think I sleep better now than I ever did before,” Will admits. “Exhaustion helps. Booze helps more. And the most that follows me back is wondering whether any of the tourists are actually listening or only imagining their own good qualities. Debating how long until the coffee shop tells me not to come in anymore. I used to worry about the shelter but they took care of that for me.”

Will lets his shirt pull from his shoulders, cheeks darkening between a latticework of raised, pale skin. Their jagged slashed movements are mirrored in the ridges along his thin arms.

“What do you dream about?”

The water gushes a steady stream in the shower. Hannibal steps back out from the glass door and continues to undress.

“You,” he says. “Wolf Trap and the dogs. I dream of the fog of winter evenings, when you told me the house looked like a boat on the sea. I never saw it, but in my mind’s eye.”

He watches Will, takes in the scars that he had caused, with just three words of encouragement to the Dragon:

_Kill them all._

He would take them on himself in a moment, for eternity, if it would ease Will’s pain and memory of them. He bares himself entirely first, straightening to fold his pants over his arm and regard Will before him. They are both thinner, they are both slighter and paler, unwell and exhausted, by their own chase and their own nightmares.

Hannibal should have asked sooner.

If he had, perhaps Will would have gone.

Will’s breath jerks short, a rough hitch that tugs in his brows. His fingers curl in the bottom of his undershirt, once white but greyed with wear, and he releases it to slowly shuck his pants instead.

“They missed you,” he says. “You had a way with them.”

Hannibal averts his eyes from scars and pale skin, in spite of himself. “Not Buster, certainly.”

“Buster the most,” Will snorts. “You should have seen how he tore up one of your shirts -”

“After I left.”

“Yes.”

“A peculiar show of affection.”

“A familiar one,” Will teases, his tone brittle but - he tries. He’s trying. He’s struggling and he’s trying. “She took them,” he says, sensing the question before Hannibal can ask it. “I insisted.”

He stands in his undershirt. His shorts. A sensation of _unclean_ shrinks his skin until it puckers in a spill of goosebumps and a shiver. His toes spread across the cool Travertine tile.

Hannibal’s kitchen, Will stretched onto his toes as he bent back across the counter while pancakes burnt beside them.

Will’s bathroom, an arm around Hannibal’s stomach and cheek against his shoulder as they brushed their teeth before work.

The hospital, nauseous from morphine, struggling to reach the door with only thin slits in the bandages for his eyes and an IV in his arm.

“Can I wash first?” Will asks, lips thinning as he swallows down the humiliation of the question, and his anxiety to bare himself as chaser.

Hannibal regards him, wavers on taking a step closer, and steps back instead, gesturing for Will to enter the shower as he deems necessary. Surely it is a lot to ask to expect to be this intimate again after so many things between them yawn in a chasm of bad memories and longing.

Hannibal stops near Will just enough to kiss his cheek, to nuzzle there.

“Of course,” he says, voice low. And then a smile catches his lips and he can hardly resist adding, “I had hardly thought you would need the help. You tend to luxuriate in the water, alone, well enough. I will wait for you.”

Hannibal steps away, but Will catches his wrist. His fingers tighten and he holds, just a squeeze.

There is nothing to hide, beneath the layers of grime that Will desperately wants to wash free - for his sake, for Hannibal’s, for even that fine layer to be taken away from between them. Hannibal sees the scars on Will’s arms. He knows the hell wrought savage across Will’s face. He knows the mark across his belly intimately.

“Draw the bath,” Will asks, and lets go of Hannibal’s hand.

He strips within the shower, pushing his underclothes outside of it and slipping the door closed again. The water scatters almost scalding across his skin, not from heat but from the shock of feeling a firm spray again. Soap, in copious quantities, suds grey on the first wash and white on the second. Will steadies his shaking hands in his hair, grown shaggy, through his beard, just as unkempt. He realizes only as he parts his mouth against the water that he hasn’t looked towards any of the mirrors in the bathroom.

Hannibal’s gaze is a far kinder reflection than how Will would see himself.

Hannibal goes, giving Will his privacy without the glass closet of the shower. The bath is vast here, elaborate on taloned feet, and copper. Heavy, elegant, just big enough for the two of them to indulge in together. He sets the water temperature to just too hot and finds a soothing lavender soap to fill it with, watching the bubbles grow and froth up beneath the flow of the tap. As he waits, he gathers towels for them both, fluffy and heavy and warm. 

He does not look at Will in the shower.

When the stream cuts, he turns off the tap, as well. Enough water to appear almost empty in the vast bath, yet enough that once both bodies displace most of it, it will seem near-full.

He does not wait for Will, and instead climbs into the tub himself first, settling back against the curved end of it, chin just above the suds, eyes closed as he listens to Will move around his space again, so close, just _there_ again. It feels like a dream.

Will shuffles the clothes aside again with his foot, scooting them along the floor, closer to the dainty trashbin than to anything else. He keeps his eyes ducked from the mirror, but lets his hands - clean now, the grime worked carefully free from beneath his nails - rest against the cold marble counter. _Unfair_ calls the voice from the back of his skull. _Unjust_.

“May I use -”

“Anything.”

The answer is so immediate and genuine that Will glances across his shoulder to Hannibal and blinks. His hair has greyed, thinned from the sleek, heavy strands in which he once fisted his hands hard enough to earn a snarl, legs splayed over the man’s lap as he -

“Thanks.”

Will brushes his teeth with a smear of toothpaste across his finger. He is relieved, in a vicious, ugly little way, to not see a second toothbrush beside Hannibal’s own. He spits as quietly as he can, and once his mouth is rinsed, he cups another handful of the clear, cold water to drink.

And then another.

Because he can.

And when he turns again, bare feet clicking against the tile floor, it stranger to see Hannibal still there than if he were suddenly gone. Ghosts make more sense than this. Memories of faces and scents and glimmers of touch that exist only in the recesses of his misfiring synapses. He stops beside the bath, dropping his hands as if to cover his nudity, only to lift them again, fold his arms, loosen them, adjust.

“I’m having trouble with this,” he whispers.

Hannibal’s lips shift into a smile but it fades quickly. It is hardly one of mockery, more, truly, one of warmth. He can relate. It is entirely surreal to be here, again, to have Will so close, so vulnerable and open.

His.

And he is now, by choice. He accepted Hannibal’s apology, he asked him to stay and Hannibal would not go, ever again. But Hannibal is, beyond the calm exterior, roiling in panic as much as Will. Terrified that should he misstep, should he misspeak, should he touch Will in a way that Will does not welcome that he will go again and Hannibal will never be able to bring him back.

“We never were men for easy answers,” Hannibal considers, opening his eyes, one, then the other. He sits up a little in the tub, hands over his knees as he draws them closer. “Would it help or hinder to talk about it?”

Will purses his lips in dubious amusement. “Can I get back to you on that, doctor?”

Hannibal hums agreeably, and Will lifts a leg into the tub, bringing over the other with a grimace and settling into the hot, fragrant water. Even that gentle dismissal carries in it potential that flickers quick in Hannibal’s heart. They can speak now. They can speak later. They can speak at all, now, without bulletproof glass and endless miles and blood between them.

Will sits for a moment, facing him, and drawing palmfuls of water across his arms. Gentle movements, constant, survival and need still pushing him to take comforts when they are given, rare as they have been. A clean, hot bath. A place to rest. A sense of safety despite -

Despite.

Will raises his eyes no higher than Hannibal’s chest, the hair across it now pale grey. Before he can find the strength to resist, Will turns slowly, and as Hannibal stretches his legs long to allow room, he settles back against his chest. The water sways as Hannibal lifts his arms from it but before he can bring them down again, Will turns once more, to rest his cheek against Hannibal’s heart. Firm arms wrap soft around him.

“Always so slow,” Will murmurs. “Steady. Does it ever speed?”

Hannibal tilts his head, lifting careful fingers to tuck a wet curl of hair behind Will’s ear. He draws a breath and Will buries a huffed laugh against his chest.

“Don’t say it -”

“Only for you.”

“Fuck off,” Will grins. He taps a counterpoint to the sounds of Hannibal’s heart, valves thumping open and shut, open and shut. On an open thump he leaves his fingers suspended, hovering over curls of hair, and whispers, “It shouldn’t be this easy.”

Hannibal's hands continue their gentle massage up and down Will’s arms, over his back. For a long time neither say anything, listening, instead to the suds slowly crackle to smaller and smaller lumps in the water.

"I think we have spent too long making it hard for ourselves," Hannibal says. "Perhaps this ease we can allow."

Will just turns his head against the warm chest and beating heart and settles, not wanting to break the soft atmosphere they are building together with thoughts of how easy things never feel earned.

This is certainly earned, for better or worse.

When the water begins to cool, Hannibal pushes against Will to stand, follows him out of the tub. He looks at the clothes piled by the dustbin and offers only to lend Will some until they leave the house for new things. Will bends to toss his clothes away, in answer.

It is enough.

Hannibal washes the bath down, because he’s Hannibal. Will stays in the room just to watch him, though he hardly looks at him at all, always allowing Hannibal to stay in his peripheral, always that pleasant jerk of adrenaline when he senses the movement there. 

He follows Hannibal back to the bedroom, when he goes, and accepts the clean and soft pair of shorts to sleep in. When Hannibal turns down the bed, Will crawls in as though he had never left it, taking up space with a quiet groan of pleasure.

He is beautiful. 

Hannibal cannot stop watching him. Even when the lights go out and the room is bathed in the soft glow of warm outside lights. Will presses close with a nuzzle, so exhausted he can barely see.

"Didn't get to try the fucking snails," he mumbles, shivering in pleasure as Hannibal cards his fingers through Will’s hair. Again and again until Will’s breathing eases to sleep and he grows heavy against Hannibal’s chest.

"You will," Hannibal promises him, then. And he knows that for as silly a thing as it is, he will not break it.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"You missed this," Hannibal purrs, and Will just moans his answer._
> 
> _Every day of every year._
> 
> _Every hour of every day._
> 
> _Every minute of every hour._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta'd by our beloved [Noodle](http://noodletheelephant.tumblr.com/)!

Will awakens not to hard concrete under his back, nor to the prodding of a policeman to move him along. When he blinks awake, it is with a start, spurred to panic in an instant - for an instant - before he recognizes the sensation of a plush mattress and sleek sheets, tangled around his legs. Before he puts together the sun-soaked room and how he got there.

Before he realizes that the warmth in the empty bed beside him belongs to -

“Hannibal?”

His stomach coils, dread and hunger tangling tight. Before he can try to swallow the dryness in his mouth, Will’s heart skitters along the cobblestones of his ribs, skidding faster. He pushes upward to sit, a new sort of pain shortening sharp along his spine from the soft bed.

He spans a hand across the sheets beside him, over the pillow. A grey hair tickles his fingertips and he holds it closed in his hand, as if by that small talisman alone he can bring Hannibal back.

He does not want this place without him.

He does not want this life without him.

Not anymore.

“Hannibal!”

Hurried footsteps, though still surprisingly, unnervingly quiet, and Will turns towards the door. He trembles to see Hannibal there, hair mussed in sleep and eyes wide, looking Will over quickly for signs of hurt or damage.

He finds none, and makes his way back to bed at a slower pace, setting a knee to the mattress before leaning close to catch Will's lips with his own in a soft morning kiss. 

"I was just finishing up breakfast," he tells him quietly. "An omelette, potatoes and sweet bell peppers and cheese. Some herbs from the garden to garnish." He smiles then, eyes narrowed warm. "And black coffee."

For a moment, Will can only clutch the silver hair in his hand tighter, fist clenched hard enough to whiten his knuckles. The color that drained to pallor returns in a bloom of blushing embarrassment and he leans close, mouth brushing Hannibal’s cheek. Slowly, his fist unfurls, and his lips in turn.

His eyes close and he whispers, “I thought you left without me.”

Hannibal just sighs, and again, here is no pity, just familiarity and exhaustion. Another nuzzle turns him against Will softly and he smiles.

"Never without you,” he promises. With another kiss, just little, he excuses himself to return downstairs for their breakfast.

The kitchen is quiet and empty, rare that it is allowed its own sound for a change, without dinner parties for special guests or Anthony perched on the edge of the counter kicking his legs like a small child against the drawers.

That, he misses.

Setting two plates to the tray, cutlery, two cups of coffee and napkins, Hannibal moves back upstairs. 

Will has curled beneath the covers again, holding them drawn up around his shoulders, the comforter tucked beneath his chin. Beneath wild, unbrushed curls, he watches Hannibal with wide blue eyes. Each step that brings the man nearer in turn tugs Will’s smile up a little more.

“There aren’t words to describe how much I’ve missed your cooking.”

Hannibal’s smile at this shows in his eyes, his pride in the slight upward cant of his chin. “Only that?”

The covers whisper as Will holds them closer, stirring and settling, and he shakes his head. “Not only,” he agrees. “But even that admission isn't without an excruciating amount of cognitive dissonance.”

"Breakfast first, then," Hannibal suggests, just as calm, just as gentle as everything else he voices. He sets the tray to the bed as Will pulls himself up to rest against the headboard, and passes Will his coffee before settling in beside him again. It is early yet, enough that had this been any other morning, both would be sleeping.

But this is new again, a waking dream all its own.

"I have made enough for three," Hannibal notes. "So that you eat your fill."

Will cradles the mug with both hands and only just stops himself from groaning at the scent of it, the heat, the bed beneath and the man beside and the scent of food that makes his stomach rumble instead of his voice. He takes a shaky sip, small, savoring the dark warmth from his bottom lip. The omelettes are browned, just a little, scattered with rosemary over the peaks of potato within and hints of green peppers. Will’s throat clicks as he swallows back an embarrassing degree of salivation.

“I can save one for later,” he suggests. “I don’t need two now.”

“But you can have them,” Hannibal says, not unkindly, taking the tray up again to rest between them. “And if you would like more later, or something else entirely, we will make it.”

Will’s jaw tightens and Hannibal notes the anxiety in him. He knows all too well of food scarcity and their effect on one’s behavior; he knows all too well of hoarding and the fear that one will be without again. A similar sensation spurs him to move closer to Will, their legs pressed together beneath the sheets.

“I will not have you hungry in our home,” he murmurs, eyes crinkled warmly in the corners.

He doesn’t argue, in truth too surprised by the validation given to this strange and softly-lit morning space between them. Why fight against this, when the ceaseless battles between each other and themselves wrought so much hell for them and countless others? Why resist when there is nothing left for either to lose that they would not relinquish with a shrug?

Will sets aside his coffee and reaches for a fork, to work loose a corner of egg and cheese, and spear a piece of wayward potato beside. His stomach makes a savage sound as buttery eggs, richly herbed, all but melt across his tongue. Bringing the back of his hand to his mouth, Will’s brows lift and he breathes a laugh.

“If you’re trying to seduce me with this, it isn’t going to work,” Will says. “You’re only going to make me fall asleep again.”

"Terrible," Hannibal says, taking up his own fork as well to slice some omelette from the other plate. He takes the bite with a smile, eyes narrowed at Will as they chew together in silence. He deliberately follows the movement as Will reaches for more and smiles when Will snorts at the game.

He is beautiful.

Despite the scars that paint light lines over his skin. Perhaps because of them. He is a survivor of so much more than that pain, so much more than Hannibal. Hannibal watches him take another bite, watches the way his jaw works and his throat in turn as he swallows. Hannibal takes up a small piece of potato with his fingers and sets it between his own lips, smiling when Will freezes for a moment, to watch.

Will read in the papers about his escape, biting out the throat of a nurse, leaving behind a trail of blood. He had imagined those lips, kissed and nibbled, licked and sucked, covered in a coat of shining crimson. He’s not proud of how he touched himself, imagining touching them then. His fascination has always been rapt, held in awe of the miracles and monstrosities of which Hannibal is capable through that part of him alone.

He touches his tongue to his own lips, and catches a dissonant shiver as he feels the scars there, momentarily forgotten in this limbo that feels like so long ago. With a gentle nod, just one, Will gives permission. He asks. His mouth parts in mirror to Hannibal’s own as he sets the potato between his teeth, and goosebumps cascade along his skin as he looks away with a furrowed brow and a blush.

“That might work,” Will mumbles, wry, as he takes another bite of omelette.

Or tries to, anyway.

Hannibal holds out another piece of potato, plucked from its confines, this time to Will. He laughs because he can’t help it. He laughs because he is, in fact, helpless. And for a moment he wonders if it could have always been so simple, or if they needed to sever the Gordian Knot of their psyches in order for it to be so.

With a little shuddering sigh, Will opens his mouth.

Fingers slippery with butter trace his tongue, set the morsel against it and pull free. Hannibal runs clean knuckles over Will’s cheek, watching him chew and swallow, watching the way his eyes darken as he blinks. He takes up a piece of omelette next, uncaring for how messy the process will be, and feeds that to Will next. It becomes another game of balance and patience, who can outlast the other’s endurance, Hannibal's fingers curling against Will’s lips, tracing and worshiping them, and Will’s tongue slips between his fingertips, teasing, before they are pulled free.

Soon, they clear one plate.

"More?" Hannibal asks, brows up in seemingly genuine curiosity as he licks the side of his thumb clean of butter.

Will gives a shake of his head, brightening a little. He draws his legs up beneath him and sits cross-legged, facing Hannibal. “We were going one-for-one.”

“Were we,” Hannibal asks, eyes narrowing in pleasure. Will nods, very grave indeed, and reaches to tear off a piece of messy omelette himself.

“You’ll have to catch up,” Will informs him. He feels ridiculous, his own voice saying those words sounds ridiculous. There is nothing reasonable or rational about any of this.

In truth, there never has been. Not with them.

Will feeds the bite to Hannibal, fingertip tracing against the strong curl of his tongue. Dragging over sharp teeth, lingering a moment more between his lips, Will’s breath stops and he loses what’s left in a little sound when Hannibal sucks the butter from his finger. Hannibal can slow and speed his heart at will. Will doesn’t have that control. Pulse humming hivelike in his ears, heat spreading scarlet between scars and spilling down into his belly, Will’s long lashes drape across darkening eyes as Hannibal chews, with Will’s fingertip still just between his lips.

He takes the plate as Hannibal moves the tray to the floor, and in the instant he isn’t watched, Will pulls the comforter over his lap to hide his tented shorts.

Hannibal sits comfortably in a half recline and watches Will, amusement sparking light behind his eyes as he obediently parts his lips for more breakfast. He takes his time savoring the taste of Will beneath the aromatic egg, takes his time to look over Will properly.

"Are you sated?" Hannibal asks him suddenly, smile narrowing his eyes. "I find I cannot be if you are not."

Will brings a finger to his lips in thought, softly sucking from it the flavor of breakfast and Hannibal both. His cock jerks in stiff response, his cheeks darken, as Hannibal’s attention drifts to Will’s mouth, just so. In the hierarchy of human needs, Will’s base has been rebuilt. He has rested and eaten, he is clean and sheltered.

And with those needs met, new ones arise, just as painfully felt in the years apart - a different kind of hunger.

“I’m not,” Will says, leaning closer with a clumsy hand against the bed to balance himself, and the same finger still warm from his own mouth lifted as if to feed Hannibal again. “I’m - I’m really not.”

"Terrible," Hannibal whispers again, leaning to take the plate carefully from Will and set it back on the tray with the other. No sooner does he turn back that he lets his hand slide over the comforter and tug it lower, revealing Will’s predicament with a raising of his brows and a smile.

He has missed this, Will’s inescapable sexual energy, always a selfish lover first, then an entirely selfless one. Hannibal swallows, leans closer with his hand skimming between Will’s legs to stroke him. His smile splits bright for a moment, and when Will surges forward to kiss him, Hannibal is ready. Lips hot against each other, an elegant turn of his hips and Will is pinned beneath Hannibal’s weight to the bed.

Will kicks the blankets away, skinny legs flailing. Tongue plunging past Hannibal’s lips, he shoves his hands against the older man’s face, pushes fingers through his hair, locks fingers at the back of his neck. There is no room for light between them, lost in each other’s shadow. There is no room for air between them that isn’t shared.

Will’s voice cracks high as Hannibal’s hand slips beneath the waistband of his boxers, cupping his cock to stroke between them. Will slings an arm around Hannibal’s neck, he presses fingertips to his cheek. Beneath his hand Hannibal’s jaw moves in a familiar and consuming rhythm as they kiss entangled. A gasp parts them for an instant, and noses bumping together, their breathing cuts harsh little pants against the other’s cheek as the twine together again.

His thighs tremble, squeezing around Hannibal’s hips so intensely that he wonders if they’ll bruise. He doesn’t care. No, he wants them to bruise. He wants to wake up and wonder at these new-old aches and push his fingers into them and know that whatever happens after this, this happened.

They happened.

“Goddamn you,” Will whispers, eyes glistening and a laugh shaking loose from him before their kiss collides again.

Hannibal growls, rocking hard down against Will before freeing his hand and setting it to Will’s thigh instead, to hold him open, wider, bared. The next kiss Hannibal skirts to bite against Will’s neck, sucking and claiming him again, as playful as both are possessive. Will leaves dark parallel scratches down Hannibal’s back that the doctor shamelessly moans from.

They could rut, play and rub and work themselves to exhaustion this way, but he knows both ache for more. He knows both ache to fill and be filled, to set that last piece of a scattered puzzle down and have it complete.

"You missed this," Hannibal purrs, and Will just moans his answer.

Every day of every year.

Every hour of every day.

Every minute of every hour.

He missed the fucking and the food, the rough demands and the gentle touches. The intimacy, _god_ the _intimacy_ that once asked everything, took everything, left him hollow and now asks nothing more than that he _be_. Live. Breathe. Exist, just as he is and just as they are and just as they should have always been.

Will hisses, arching beneath a too-hard scrape of teeth against his collarbone, raised high beneath thin skin. He snares his fingers in Hannibal's hair and pulls in counter to the arch of hips that allow Hannibal to skim free boxers of bony hips and toss them uncaring to the floor. When their eyes meet it feeds them both, as sensual as any kiss and penetrating deep. Will shudders, whimpering pass lips puffed pink from the furious joining of their mouths. Where either find the energy for this is a mystery Will doesn't care to solve.

It exists. And that's enough.

"Inside me," Will gasps. "I need you."

More honest words have never been spoken between them. Will snares Hannibal's hair tighter and shoves their cocks together, spreading slick precome between their bellies. Hannibal sets a hand to Will's throat and skims dark eyes across the springlike bloom of flowering red that comes to life from under a body made frozen.

"Every time I touched myself," Will whispers, "I thought of you."

"Will..." Hannibal's voice is just as tight, just as weak as he rocks against him, pressing firm and messy kisses to Will’s cheek and neck. He has ached for him, reached across the small cot in prison for him, across the large bed here for him.

And now he's here, again.

Forever, he hopes.

"Touch me," Hannibal begs him quietly. "Please."

Will splays his fingers across Hannibal’s cheek and kisses away the plea that splits down Will like a faultline, halving him to the core. To imagine that only he was lonely is a lie, and a cruelty besides. As their lips draw together and Will rolls Hannibal to his back, he tries to imagine how this man’s beautiful, savage mind must have suffered. No music to stir him, no food to sate his need for flavors, nothing lovely to elevate him - however briefly - from a concrete and steel hell of their own making.

Of Will’s making, for him.

Wordless apology wraps around Will’s vocal chords in a desperate whimper. He cannot give Hannibal those years back, as Hannibal cannot give him back the family that was taken in exchange. Years and years of emptiness. Years and years wasted.

Spreading his legs wide across Hannibal’s thighs, Will draws back from their kiss with a moan and pushes his hands between them. He grasps Hannibal’s cock - one hand around the head, the other fingers fanned around his shaft - and as he strokes he rocks forward, and his own erection pulses thick and full against his wrists. As Hannibal’s back bends and his eyelids flutter closed, Will draws a sharp breath. Nevermind the erosion of muscles. Nevermind the spill of silver through his hair and across his chest. Nevermind the dark circles beneath his eyes or the leanness of his face. He has never been more beautiful than now, right now - bent in abandon.

Will waits until Hannibal moans, and only then whispers that he loves him, letting the tide of Hannibal’s voice wash over it.

Breathless and alive, they move against each other, Hannibal's hands tugging Will’s long hair, pulling the curls straight. They rediscover, remember, remind. Hannibal is trembling before Will is, finally allowing his emotions to splinter free, crack by crack. He clings to Will as he keeps touching, shivering a laugh against his cheek.

"I never stopped," Hannibal sighs. He had always hoped, found himself not so much praying as creating a mantra, for himself, to find, to seek, to atone.

Always atone.

He arches high against Will and as Will bends he draws his knees up and turns them again, rocking down against Will as he kisses him, as he touches every scar with gentle fingers, in worship, seeking forgiveness. Will flinches. He can’t help it, as much a reflex as the racing of his heart or the hardness tugging at his cock. Hannibal doesn’t stop, and despite the shortening of Will’s breath, some fearful part of him is grateful for it. Hannibal’s fingers follow the furrow across the bridge of Will’s nose, where it was cut loose to a thread of skin.

He doesn’t laugh.

He kisses.

Hannibal traces the rippled skin that dug into his skull and nearly took out his eye, had he not lifted his arm to stop the edge there instead.

He doesn’t stare.

He kisses.

Over Will’s battered lips and the hollows that Will can feel with his tongue, cut straight through enough to chip his teeth. Over the surgical scars cut into his throat to allow him to breathe when Will would have drowned in his own blood without it. Over skin that Will saw hanging flayed from his face and over skin that he clung to desperately despite wanting nothing more than to let the red waters swallow him whole and over skin that once was kissed by a wife, a child, down to that raw place that first was touched by Hannibal.

Will’s cheeks dampen, and he thinks of blood.

Hannibal hushes him and murmurs, words that Will thinks might not even be in English anymore, but he doesn’t need to know their meaning to understand them.

_I'm sorry._

_I love you._

_Forgive me._

_Let me show you._

_Let me save you._

Over and over in adoration and protectiveness, he dotes upon Will and kisses his tears away. He strokes him until Will’s cock leaks against his fingers, until he can slick his hand with the precome and bring his hand lower between Will’s legs to spread him, to push one finger in, then another.

"Forgive me my lack of preparation," Hannibal murmurs and Will laughs, clear, and light, and Hannibal kisses him.

Will kisses back. He drowns himself instead in the boundless depths of Hannibal’s love, atmospheres of pressure diving profound in understanding. He kisses fierce enough, body bending as if to surface, only to feel himself pressed down again. He reaches through Hannibal’s hair, pushes against him with tightened legs. His airless gasps heat from panic to passion.

Pushing against Hannibal’s chest, Will ducks his head to watch between them. Legs spreading, he cannot see the push and pull against his tender skin, he cannot see the stretch of widened fingers that jerks his breath to a high and aching moan. But he can see their cocks, pulsing towards the other. He can see Hannibal’s forearm flex fierce as he curls his fingers and makes Will unable to see at all, eyelids fluttering closed as darkness bursts bright behind them.

“No preparation,” Will laughs, shaking his head. “No - no, just you.” As if Hannibal needs coaxing, Will reaches between them to tug against velvet-soft skin pulled almost painfully taut. Will sinks a sucking kisses beneath Hannibal’s jaw, pulling a violet bruise to the surface before he begs again, “Please.”

Hannibal slows, enough to bring them closer, enough to hitch Will’s hips just so, that motion practiced and not forgotten, even years apart. He breathes a laugh, kisses Will, lines up against him, kisses Will, and pushes slowly in. He thinks of their rough games and intimate mornings, he thinks of the way Will’s breath would hitch just so when he was teased or edged. He thinks of how often he had imagined in his memory palace them together in bed, rocking slow and sharing breath, close, so close.

"Beautiful Will," he whispers.

“Don’t lie to me,” Will laughs, and though the words reverberate deep into their bones, they do not shake either man the way they once did. A kiss closes across Will’s mouth to strip his worries away, and he clenches his legs tight over Hannibal’s hips.

“Never,” Hannibal promises. “You are, always. You have been, always.”

A sharp thrust rattles the bed beneath them and sunders a cry from Will, a laugh and a sob all at once. His cock spreads sticky slick between them, rubbed between age-softened bellies. Will clenches, he spreads, he opens himself to allow Hannibal physically as deep inside as he has always been in every other way. They join the same way they love, rough and all-encompassing, blinding and beautiful.

Hot breaths and whispered promises, parted mouths and arched backs. Sweaty skin and messy hair. Them, entirely, connected again. Finally made whole.

Hannibal comes first, thrusting erratic and quick against Will, burying his face against the join of neck and shoulder, a sound almost like a sob that shudders his shoulders as Will’s fingers scrabble against them and leave little red marks.

He slips a hand between them and strokes Will quickly, tugging his earlobe with a moan, grinning when Will squirms up against him and spills hot between.

Neither could last longer than that, not together again, not after so long apart. Neither have to make the moment last and the quickness resonates as confirmation. They will have this again. Again and again and again. In a few hours, with curious fingers and eager mouths. In a few days with sleepy murmurs and gentle rocking. In weeks and months and years to come, each willing to bend for the other, each willing to be bent. Both know, without needing to say so, that were their own iniquities to come between them again, it would sever the last threads of their lives cleanly.

There is comfort in that, too.

Will traps Hannibal inside him with a squeeze of his legs, even as they roll to their sides and bring their hearts and mouths together again. A laugh of sweet disbelief spills from both as their gazes meet between sleepy kisses, hands tangled in the other’s hair. This is their last chance together, after countless pathways poorly chosen and catlike lives cut short.

In a shared breath, they whisper their love against the other’s lips.

It might be their last chance, but they only need the one.

\---[x]---

It's raining when Anthony leaves the house. The umbrella goes up, and with a few choice words murmured at the weather, he takes the streets with the most awnings on his way to the library. 

He could have stayed home today. He has lines to align from the pages and pages of messy scribbling piling up on his desk. He has food enough to not warrant a trip out in this weather. He has wine.

But in truth, it is the company he misses: anyone who recognizes him, who doesn't, who just offers a smile as he passes by. Interaction, noise, observation. Enough to sate his restlessness and justify his procrastination, in a place he will have an excuse not to speak to anyone at all if he so wishes.

So the library it is.

Enough umbrellas suggest that it is the choice of the morning for many usual street-goers, and Anthony leaves his umbrella with the rest before making his way upstairs. Usually, on days like these, he would find a nook and tap his pen in rhythmic Morse against his page. Today, though, a certain masochism has been building, a need for a release of upset and exhaustion over a situation he knew he had no control over from the beginning. Today, he heads towards the poetry section to read his way through the works of those more successful, more worldly - and wordy - than he.

Curled tight into one of the window seats overlooking the piazza below, Anthony crosses his legs, knees against the wall of the little niche. He’s too tall to sit like this comfortably, but the strain in his thighs from coiling so confined is familiar. It feels like university, in fact, ill-lit late night readings spent simultaneously perfecting a particular presentation: _moody poet seeks someone to understand his tormented heart and also suck his cock_.

Rain twitches wiry down the glass and he cracks open a book of Dylan Thomas. If he’s going to spend the day moping before tying one on, there’s no better company for it.

But this isn’t Cambridge, with its ancient nooks and archaic crannies, strange formations of architecture whose intentions are centuries forgotten. It is a public library, and Anthony has hardly even begun his litany of self-loathing over every line when footsteps disrupt his desperate orison. He squints. Slumping down further, knees near higher than his shoulders, his back reminds him that he’s too old for any of this nonsense and he ignores it.

_He films my vanity. Shot in the wind, by tilted arcs…_

The figure lingers, as if seeking seat beside him.

“There’s more downstairs. Or anywhere else,” Anthony murmurs in Italian.

“I like the view from this one.”

_And the masked, headless boy. His reels and mystery…_

Will’s brows lift as Anthony’s gaze comes to rest on him. He has changed, already, in the few days that Anthony has stayed away, seeking other beds in which to sleep, avoiding the house and all its broken-window conversations, distorted and unclear. Will’s pallor has begun to fade. He’s trimmed his beard. He is dressed in clothes that fit him, though no finer than the things he had before.

“Is it ugly if I admit I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you whole again, and I left anyway?”

Will considers the question, but shakes his head.

“Is it cruel to tell you you’re both mad?”

Another shake, but this time with a smile.

“Accurate,” Will answers. “If simplistic.”

“I prefer to remain a simple creature,” Anthony declares, untwisting his legs to set his feet to the floor, and make room in the small space for Will. “There are things best left unknown. One need not know the nature of the great beasts beneath the water to see their shadow and avoid them. I didn’t mean to hurt you. It was the last thing I wanted.”

Will takes a seat and turns to watch the poet. He thinks of that moment of cold realization, that resignation that had fallen upon him when Anthony and Hannibal had shared that look, the nod of understanding between them. He thinks of Hannibal’s answer when he had asked about following. 

"You didn't," Will tells him honestly, then affects a frown, pursing his lips and turning away. "I retract. You did. Quite cruelly."

A moment between them passes as Anthony sighs slowly and nods, before Will continues. 

"Not only did you invite me to dinner and didn't stay, but you also never finished reciting your book to me." Will turns back to Anthony with a smile perched beneath his eyes. "A man would develop trust issues with denials like that."

"Would he?" the poet asks, a blush warming the curves of his cheekbones. For a long moment he says nothing at all, and Will seems content to remain just as silent in his patience. Then, with a laugh sighed between barely parted teeth, Anthony straightens his shoulders. "However can I make amends to such a man?"

“Coffee,” Will suggests. “You can pay this time.”

Anthony’s smile twitches wider, and splits to a grin. “Of course. It would be my pleasure. You’ve saved me from a dreary day reading an Irish drunkard’s poetry, far superior to anything I’ll ever manage, and then drinking myself to a stupor over it.”

“Well, if you had plans -”

Anthony laughs and before he can even imagine stopping himself, he leans close and touches his forehead to Will’s temple. He rests there for a moment, eyes closed, and lets his fingers slip from the pages held to instead revel in a moment of gratitude for forgiveness and friendship. For Will being here at all, and the strange circumstances that brought them together.

“Is that all, then? Rather low-maintenance. I might even be able to manage it.”

Will hums and turns his head a little, allowing the fond nuzzle between them. “There’s one more thing.”

“Not the snails, I hope. Honestly, I find them ghastly. I’ve no idea how to cook them - that’s all him -”

“Your poems,” Will interjects, amused. “I want to hear the rest of them.”

That much, Anthony can certainly manage, and as he uncurls from the window seat and offers a hand to Will, he can’t imagine any audience for whom he’d enjoy performing more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again, with endless boundless tireless affection, to [Ride Eternal](http://ride-eternal.tumblr.com/) for letting us run roughshod with so many beautiful ideas. We hope you loved it.


End file.
